‘You look good,’ I understated. When she put her arms round me I smelled her perfume – spicy today with notes of cinnamon and oak – and I wanted to bury my face against her broad shoulder. I missed Lola and Jack’s prickliness denied any possibility of contact, but was I so needy for physical warmth? It was no wonder I loved to sweep Cassie up and feel the india-rubber limbs and tiny bones suspended in my arms.

‘You look tired.’

‘Thanks.’ But it was true, I was weary and for no reason that I could think of.

We had hardly settled in our seats before Mel announced, ‘Jasper might join us for half an hour. He’s at a meeting just round the corner.’

Instantly I realised that this lunch wasn’t about me and Mel at all but about me-meeting-Jasper, and Mel had deliberately engineered it to happen in this low-key way because she hadn’t wanted there to be any build-up to the encounter. That she had thought this much about it was significant because she had never been calculating about any of her previous lovers. Now I felt wrong-footed, and not just because I was wearing my work clothes, jeans and a grey T-shirt, while Mel was draped in taupe designer linens. I would have liked advance notice. I could have rehearsed myself into the right friendly frame of mind for meeting the man who was going to be my rival for Mel’s affection and attention. I didn’t want us to be rivals for her; it was just that this piece of calculation announced that we were almost expected to be.

‘Here he is now,’ Mel said unnecessarily, because I knew it was him as soon as the door swung open. Jasper was a big bear of a man with a head of thick greying hair cut modishly close to his skull. He was wearing clothes that made him look comfortable and didn’t try to announce anything. His eyes searched the tables for Mel and at the sight of her his face broke into a smile as broad as a soccer pitch.

Mel almost disappeared in his arms. When she re-emerged, pink in the face, she made the introduction, mixing up her words as she did so, and Jasper took my hand in his. ‘I’ve heard all about you, Sadie,’ he said warmly.

I smiled back at him. That I hadn’t heard many details about him told me more about Mel’s feelings than volumes of words.

We sat down. It was one of those easygoing places with long wooden communal tables where the margins between groups of diners become blurred, and I realised that Mel had thought this out too. If the encounter were to be in any way awkward it would be easy to have a quick bowl of noodles and move on.

‘I wanted you two to meet each other,’ she said.