‘This is serious cooking.’ But even though she was eating Mel was also listening intently to what I said. This was one of the foundation stones of our friendship – we ate and talked, and told each other what we were thinking. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I hope his daughter and I will like each other. But, you know.’

I did know. I had been Mel’s friend through the last throes of her longing for a baby, and I had seen the sadness that descended on her when she accepted that it was finally too late. She felt her own emptiness so profoundly: the prospect of meeting Jasper’s daughter, the loved child of a woman he had once loved, would be disturbing, however welcome the idea might also be.

She hesitated, then said, ‘There’s a part of me that mourns, how sad, how wasteful for the two of us not to have found each other until now, when it’s too late for us to have our own child together.’

‘Does he want one?’

Mel shook her head and the black curls fanned out round her face. ‘No. He says he’s already got everything he wants in the offspring department, in Clare.’

‘Then he’s lucky.’ I wondered briefly if Mr Rainbird hoped for children of his own, after spending his working life surrounded by other people’s. ‘And nothing has really changed for you about a baby, has it? Except that now you have the consolation of loving Jasper and being loved by him. I know you do love him. I’ve never seen you look or heard you talk this way before.’

‘It’s because I know it’s serious. I’m taking it so seriously. Plenty of men I’ve been out with before now had kids and I never paid much attention to that.’

‘No, you didn’t. This is different. Go and meet Clare. She’ll be someone new to love even though she isn’t your own child, and maybe there’s some way she can even become a kind of substitute, in time, in a small way.’

It was easy enough for me to say, because I had known the absorbed intensity of pregnancy and the intimacy of feeding my babies, and because Lola and Jack were within every fibre of me then and now, and always would be. Mel had never known this connection and it was wrong of me to envy her even a little bit for what she was enjoying today.

‘Thanks, Sadie.’ She was smiling, her red lipstick a generous slash of colour against the tasteful monochromes of the restaurant’s decor.

I did love her. Her friendship mattered to me more than almost anything else in the world. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘I don’t want to talk about myself through the whole of the next course as well. It’s your turn now. Tell me something.’