With that she walked off and disappeared into the house.

The three of us sat and looked at each other. Then Mum pulled herself together and said, ‘I’m sure she’ll thaw. Buckle up.’

Ava and I put our seatbelts on again, and Mum moved to the part of the car park Ingrid had pointed out. Then we made our way into the building, crossed the chequerboard floor of the big entrance hall and were admitted to Ingrid’s flat.

Inside, it had a hushed, slightly cramped feeling. The front door opened onto a small lobby that gave way to a narrow corridor. Ingrid waved us through to a big living room that had thick green carpet and lots of dark, heavy antique-looking furniture, and long French windows that opened onto a terrace and gave a view of the lawn.

It smelled of polish and lavender pot-pourri, and was immaculately spick and span, even though Ingrid had plenty of the kind of ornaments that were magnets for dust: china candle holders, statuettes, and a ticking, golden carriage clock. There were photos too, in ornate gilt frames: a younger, rather handsome Mark on his graduation day, a younger Ingrid with the younger Mark having a picnic by a river somewhere, Mark – presumably – as a little blonde boy holding tadpoles in a jar, Mark looking tanned and happy in a boat on a lake that didn’t look at all English. That photo looked as if someone had been cut out of the other half of it. Mark’s first wife, presumably; there were no pictures of her anywhere.

Tucked in a corner, behind a very tall, very green pot plant, I spotted a picture of a bald man with glasses and a thin smile: Mark’s dad, presumably. He very definitely didn’t have pride of place. But there was a space reserved on the mantelpiece for a black-and-white photograph of a couple who I guessed were Ingrid’s parents. The man looked old and fierce and like he wasn’t used to anybody disagreeing with him. A bit like Ingrid, in fact. The woman looked like the sort of landlady Mum would have complained about, who’d bill you for stuff you didn’t even know existed when you moved out. They were next to a picture of Mark in a suit looking nervous and serious and as if there was absolutely no way he was going to run the risk of letting anybody down.

‘Do take a seat,’ Ingrid said, looking us over with a touch of regret, as if we might have brought dirt in with us that would mess up the upholstery but there was nothing she could do about that now.

She wafted a hand in the direction of the round table on the far side of the room; it was already laid, and there were dishes in the centre covered with tea-towels. ‘We’ll sit down to lunch when Mark gets here. It’s rather a picnicky sort of meal, I’m afraid. Cooking for several people is too much for me these days. I’m lucky in that I enjoy very good health, but I do know my limits.’