‘Well, the thing is, I don’t really want it. I don’t need it, do I? So I want to give my share to Audrey.’

Caz rattled beans into the coffee grinder and called the routine ‘Sorry, everyone’ before the din began. I waited through the seconds and when I could hear myself speak again said, ‘That’s very generous of you. But Audrey owns a house, quite a valuable one I should think, in that street. Does she need your money?’

Jack frowned even harder, so that his tufty eyebrows pulled close together. ‘There’s a reason. A pretty good reason, actually.’

I waited. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’

‘No. I think she should tell you herself.’

Jasper towered beside me, saying that Mel wanted camomile tea instead of coffee and Lois was wondering if we had any Earl Grey. This last made me think of Audrey’s neighbours Tim and Gavin and their big white teapot and the siege of Turnmill Street. It seemed a long time ago. ‘Coming up,’ I told Jasper. Then I said seriously to Jack, ‘All right. I’ll go and see Audrey this weekend and she can tell me whatever it is.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said and shrugged. He drifted over to switch on the television, quelling its sudden blare of noise by aiming the remote. He yawned and stretched out in an armchair.

The evening was winding down. Caz had done most of the washing up and now she and Graham were making a move to go home. Lois was deep in conversation with Paul. Mel’s face was waxy with exhaustion and Jasper nodded when I raised my eyebrows at him.

‘Have we got to go? Just let me finish my tea,’ Mel insisted. In the old days she was always among the last to leave the party: she would feel the need to stay at this one that was being given in her honour.

‘Mel,’ Jasper warned her and she blinked at him.

‘So is this how it’s going to be? For ever?’

‘Yeah. Home by ten thirty, or else.’

‘Maybe I’m making a terrible mistake.’

‘Don’t say that, darling.’ Lois looked shocked. Mel always did say that her mother had trouble with irony.

It took time to find Lois’s cashmere wrap and then she kept remembering something else she wanted to tell Paul about her early days with Steven. By the time she was ready to go Mel looked as if she could rest her head on the table and go straight to sleep.

‘Where’s Clare gone?’ Jasper was asking. More or less on cue, Lola and the others languidly reappeared.

‘Mum, we thought we’d go on to a club. That’s okay, isn’t it?’ Lola murmured.