‘Somehow I doubt that,’ I said.

‘Oh, come on. She’s probably been planning something like that for years.’

‘I think it might have been an impulse thing. I mean, obviously she must have thought about it. And somehow she must have found out about the wedding, and maybe it struck her as a bit of a provocation…’

‘It was the perfect venue,’ Ava said, with that strange mix of pride and defensiveness that some brides seem to go in for – as if they were artists, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to compromise their vision. Not that I’d ever been like that, but then, I’d never tried to organise a big white wedding.

‘I know, but it was pretty much on Paula’s doorstep.’

‘I can’t believe you’re taking her side on this. If you were worried about it, why didn’t you say something earlier?’

‘I didn’t like to,’ I admitted. ‘I guess I thought it would be all right. I mean, I never would have dreamed that she’d just show up like that.’

Ava didn’t look particularly mollified. She smoothed her skirts and examined her immaculately manicured hands. Next to her diamond engagement ring, her gold wedding band gleamed: new, unscratched, and until now, unworn.

Of course she’d wanted everything to be perfect. I’d never known that my cynical, secretive daughter was such a romantic… until she had accepted Toby’s proposal.

‘I can’t help it if she happens to live nearby,’ she said. ‘I mean, how was I to know she and her daughter would have stayed in the house she got off Dad? She could have sold it up and moved somewhere else years ago.’

‘Daisy is your dad’s daughter, too,’ I reminded her. ‘Your half-sister.’

‘Yeah, well, Ellie’s all the sister I need, thank you very much. Quite enough to be going on with.’

Ellie removed her earphones. ‘Leave me out of it.’

‘How can I?’ Ava said. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? Even if you have been trying to make out you’re not listening.’

‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see Paula’s point of view,’ Ellie said.

‘Oh, come on. Where’s your loyalty?’ Ava turned back to me. ‘If Paula’s held a grudge against you all these years, that’s her problem.’

‘Well… to be fair to her, it must have come as a shock to find out her husband had a child with someone else. Ex-husband. We probably shouldn’t have left it to Ingrid to break the news. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she wasn’t the most sensitive of people.’

‘So you had a fling with Dad when his marriage was on the rocks. Big deal. It’s not like it was a big, long secret affair. It was a one-off with unexpected consequences.’

‘Well, that’s one way to look at it.’

Ava was studying me with an unusual degree of interest, as if she was trying to get the measure of me. It was as if she was trying to think about all this objectively for the first time – trying on an onlooker’s perspective for size, rather than being part of it.