‘Jack’s head of year, eh?’ Caz said. We were taking her milk jugs and meat dishes out of their packing case nests and putting them away.

‘Mm.’ I unwrapped the china cat and put him on the mantelpiece. He looked dusty and displaced in this new setting, and I ran my finger consolingly down his painted back.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Rather crumpled, quizzical, sympathetic. Like an English teacher, in fact. One of the kids got drunk on the school trip and threw up everywhere. Jack said Mr Rainbird cleared it up and was quite nice about it.’

Caz straightened up from her packing case and blew upwards so her fringe lifted off her forehead. ‘God. Grab him.’

‘Caz, we’re going to see a film together. He hasn’t asked me to marry him.’

‘Would you like him to?’

I started a laugh but it got caught in my throat. ‘No. Not at all. I’m an independent woman. I’m happy to stay the way I am.’

Caz raised an eyebrow. ‘That sounds like Mel’s mantra. “Men, who needs them? Use ’em and lose ’em.” ’

‘And look what’s happened to her.’

Caz nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, Jasper’s a bit of a dish, isn’t he? Your Mr Rainbird seems all right, too. It’s nice for some, I must say. Here are you and Mel, both of you going out to dinners and having an exotic time and the possibility of interesting sex. I’m jealous.’

We both looked out through the patio doors into the small garden where Graham was irritably stowing garden tools in a lopsided shed. I was reddening with embarrassment at the mere thought of having sex with Jack’s head of year. Then my eyes met Caz’s and we laughed, duly acknowledging but not needing to calibrate the prolonged and intricate compromises of marriage against the daily tiny exposures of being single.

‘I’m not going to sleep with him. Anyway, would you really want to swap places?’

‘No. I couldn’t deal with all that business of having to wear matching underclothes,’ Caz said.

Mr Rainbird rang the doorbell at four and a half minutes past six. I invited him in and he followed me down the stairs to the kitchen.

‘You look … very nice,’ he said.

I felt flattered, because he clearly meant it. ‘Thank you. So do you.’

He was wearing a black linen jacket over a plain T-shirt and the crisp line over his ears and at the nape of his neck suggested that he had just had a haircut. He patted his elbows. ‘The other jacket’s the corduroy one with leather patches.’

‘Really? I think of you in the Marilyn T-shirt.’

‘That’s just my gig outfit.’ He looked pleased that I remembered, though. I gave him a glass of wine.

‘Where’s Jack?’ he asked.

‘Gone to his dad’s for the weekend.’