‘. . . which he’d then take under advisement,’ I riffed. ‘And no affection after sex, right? Post-coitus it’s more like, case closed.’

It was suddenly like old times, us tittering like schoolgirls at silly entendres and wonky wordplay. After we’d stopped giggling, Emerald said, abruptly, ‘Do you think Mr Hire a Hubby can be monogamous?’

I considered this as I walked along between my sisters. ‘He swears he only ever cheated once, with Amber. In twenty-eight years. So, he’s already monogam-ish.’

‘Oh, Ruby, I truly am sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’ Amber said, earnestly, her face aghast. ‘It was nothing more than a desperate cry for help.’ Never was there a woman more genuinely suited to be the poster girl for guilt.

For the first time in my life, I no longer felt like the youngest Ryan girl, always trying to catch up to and please and impress my older siblings.

‘Well, you can tell a lot about a sister by her hands. If she’s holding a machine gun, machete or carving knife aimed at your chest, then she’s probably still peeved,’ I replied. ‘But if not, then I’d say we’ve moved on,’ I concluded.

I took hold of Amber and Emerald’s hands and squeezed them tight, and they squeezed right back. Then we clung together in a slumped embrace, like exhausted boxers at the end of a long and bloody bout.

34

Emerald’s arthritic knee stayed on my mind on the drive home, which was an unusual place for the synovial hinge of the femur, tibia and patella to be. ‘Fancy meeting you at a joint like this?’ I mused. I was only five years younger than my biggest sister. I didn’t often think of ageing, but when I saw my face in the rear-view mirror I recognised, with mild shock, the changes that had come over me. I noted the tiny lines radiating out from around my eyes and mouth, and how the skin was loosening over my cheekbones.

While I no longer expected to be swept up into a passionate embrace by a passing poetry-quoting brainiac with smouldering eyes, a bionic cock and a sizzling wit, mothering a child at fifty was far from being one of my life goals. But Harry’s lack of paternity angst was gallant and stylish, and reminded me of what I’d loved about him in the first place. Besides this charming, laid-back attitude, he was also still trying so hard to please me. The man was redecorating and painting and gardening constantly. And cooking. When I got home that evening, wrung out and more fatigued than I’d ever felt in my life, dinner was waiting on the table – fish and coriander curry followed by pineapple upside-down cake, a craving I’d mentioned in passing that morning.