‘Yes, I think he does. I’d like him to be, unless you particularly object,’ I said. Jack only sighed.

Graham made sure that everyone had a full glass. There was a waiting pause while I suddenly wondered if I was going to be able to speak at all because my throat was tight. Mel’s head was bowed and I could see the silver hair radiating from the crown of it, and her left hand with the ring that Jasper had lately given her resting in her lap.

Caz nodded encouragement at me, her face lit with warmth, so I began, regardless. I said, ‘We might so easily not have been here tonight. But we are here and that’s mostly because Mel has been so brave. Jack said to me on the day after it happened, people like Mel don’t just go and die. It’s against the laws of nature.’

Jasper was looking at her as if there were no one else in the room, or anywhere in the rest of the world for that matter. As if they were the only two people on the planet. I glanced sideways, just for a second. Next to Lola was Clare, Jasper’s daughter. She was dark-haired, small-featured, with narrow shoulders and long pale hands. She looked straight ahead of her, her lips closed but not compressed.

‘And I told him I wasn’t so sure that there are laws out there any more, not after a summer like this one.’ The long hot weeks did have a lurid, unreal quality now, like scenes remembered from a film. ‘But Mel’s her own law, as we all know, and she came back to us. Most of all, she came back for Jasper.’

Mel lifted her head and laughed out loud, momentarily her old brash self again. ‘Was I ever going to let him go, once I’d found him? Not for any old knife wound, believe me.’

Everyone else laughed too, including Lois. ‘And I really had given up hope. Never to be mother of the bride, that would be very hard, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m not surprised you didn’t want to let him go,’ Caz called. Clare turned her head towards her father, her pale cheeks colouring, proud of him and wary and possessive all at the same time. Yes, I thought, that’s how it is.

‘Let’s drink a toast to them,’ I said. ‘To Jasper and Mel. May you always be as happy together as you look tonight.’

Everyone stood up, pushing back their chairs and lifting their glasses. The tears in my eyes didn’t just spring from the champagne’s sharp prickle on my tongue and against the roof of my mouth.

Jasper and Mel. Clare smiled gamely too as she called their names.

Mel picked up the knife I had laid beside her plate and sliced deep into the heart of the Chocolate Nemesis.