‘I think you could ask for the pudding menu. I’ll tell you after I’ve eaten the tarte tatin.’

Mel ordered us a glass of Barsac apiece to go with it and we toasted each other.

‘To many more dinners,’ she said. ‘Even when we’re old and grey.’

‘Especially when we’re old and grey. I’ll tell you what I think. That you’re the best friend any woman could have. Let’s drink to friendship.’

Mel squeezed my hand. ‘Thank you, Sadie,’ she said. ‘You too.’

She paid the hefty bill with a reckless flourish. ‘Thank you,’ I responded.

I made my way home through the chaotic streets. There were no taxis anywhere, the tube entrances were still barred and the two buses that swayed past were crammed to the doors. In any case, I was happy enough to walk. I was full of rich food and I was peering through the mildly distorting golden lens of plenty of wine. I felt buoyed up by the evening and by having opened a small chink for Mel to look into. It hadn’t been so difficult after all.

‘To friendship,’ I repeated aloud, to the cats and the parked cars, as I finally waltzed round the corner into my street.

As the next few days turned out, it was just as well that I had the dinner with Mel to buoy me up.

Lola was working for an employment agency as a temp receptionist because it paid better money than bar work, but it also meant that she had to be up, washed, dressed in a skirt and decent shoes, and out of the house by eight thirty every weekday morning. She wasn’t prepared to curtail her nightlife, however, and so she was always tired and hung-over and irritable. Her mess erupted out of her room and exploded in unpredictable corners of the house, and I found my best shoes and my Nicole Farhi shirt wedged under a half-full suitcase on her bedroom floor. She emptied the fridge of food even faster than Jack could manage to do it, and left the debris all over the kitchen floor and worktops. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ she groaned disarmingly when I yelled at her. ‘I’m just so busy.’

‘This is what life is, Lo. You go to work, you fit in everything else when you can. And you don’t have to go out every single night.’ I could hear the carping, killjoy note even as the words came out of my mouth. Did I really not want my twenty-year-old daughter to enjoy herself and to go out as often as she had the energy for it? ‘Well, it’s what my life is,’ I added ruefully.

Lola put her arms round me at once and I breathed in patchouli and cigarette smoke and elastic skin.