While she told me about this latest one we finished off the cooking, stepping neatly round each other, tasting and discussing and amending, as we had done many times before. These were the evenings I liked best, the companionable times of making unhurried food in a warm kitchen while the light turned to dark outside. I laid the table with blue-and-yellow plates and put the jug of tulips in the middle. I lit a pair of yellow candles and the glow wiped out all the dust and shabby corners, and shone on Mel’s star face and the flowers, and the photograph of the children and me that Lola had taken up to Ted’s hospital bedside.

Mel flipped the tuna off the griddle. ‘It’s ready.’

I went to the foot of the stairs and called Jack. He appeared almost at once, changed out of his school clothes and with wet hair combed flat from the shower. He sidled to his chair and sat down. Immediately he started wolfing down the fish.

‘Are you hungry?’ Mel asked.

‘Yes.’ He glanced quickly at me. ‘Didn’t get anything to eat at lunchtime.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘I should think Mum told you.’

‘Yeah. Here, have some of these baby beans. So, who did you meet? What amazing things did you do that were worth missing school for?’ Mel leaned forward, pushing her coils of hair back from her face so that she could hear better, her eyes and all her attention focused on him. There was no censure, only friendly interest.

‘No one. Nothing,’ Jack muttered.

‘Really? It sounds deadly boring.’

He nodded and went on eating. By the time the pudding came, he even joined briefly in our conversation. He talked slowly, as if he weren’t quite used to the sound of his own voice, but at least he was speaking.

After we finished and he said goodnight, Mel and I opened another bottle of wine.

‘Thanks, Mel.’

‘Tuna was a bit overcooked.’

‘I meant about Jack. Being so nice to him.’

‘I wasn’t nice, I was ordinary.’ This was true. Mel had a gift for being ordinarily warm and inclusive. Tonight it had just seemed more noticeable than ever.

‘You look very happy,’ I said. ‘This Jasper must be good news.’

‘I am happy. I wish you were.’

I felt some of the protective walls around me shifting, as if Mel’s darts might pierce them. I didn’t like it.

‘What did you mean, when you said your father was a con artist?’