They listened attentively as the maid opened the door. A voice Vivian couldn’t immediately place skittered through the walls. The maid entered with a card.

‘Where’s the tray?’ Mrs Foster asked, despairing. She read the card. ‘Miss Ava Pondson-Callow.’ A reprieve? Aid?

‘Are you at home, ma’am?’

‘Of course we are. Show her in immediately.’

Their house wasn’t enormous, so no sooner were the words out of her mouth than Ava was standing in the drawing room. And what an entrance. She was wearing a huge flat hat at least twice as wide as her shoulders, and a marvellous ecru floor-length raw silk dress. It had heavy soutache lacing along the seams and intricate knotted crochet button trims and yoke collar insert. It was tightly corseted, and belted with velvet (naturally, to show her minute waist), but over the top there was a layered pinafore that swept down to a fringed trim bottom, suggesting a fluidity and modernity that Vivian hadn’t seen in a dress before. In fact it was a statement rather than a dress. The sort of statement an older woman might have been expected to make. It was an outfit that declared that she was taking herself, and this visit, seriously. She looked like a work of art. She was always exquisite, and she’d dressed up for them. Vivian appreciated it.

‘Good morning, Mrs Foster, Miss Foster, Miss Susan Foster.’ Ava’s voice was cut glass. ‘How wonderful of you to be in. I’d have been so disappointed to miss you.’ She was towering yet graceful, her limbs extended and lifted purposefully. Her teeth were milk white, eyes light and bright, lips full and fluid, ready to beam or scowl in an instant. She looked like someone enchanted from a fairy tale, out of this world.

Mrs Foster offered a limited smile, accepting Ava (who was close to her daughter’s age) as her social equal. In that single line, Ava had conveyed warmth, by implying that the Fosters might have had somewhere else that they could be, somewhere where they might still be welcome; it was generous.

‘Is Lady Pondson-Callow with you?’ Mrs Foster asked hopefully.

Ava did not seem disconcerted, but replied, ‘My mother doesn’t make many calls, but she did instruct me to invite you to come to us.’

‘How thoughtful.’ Mrs Foster was no doubt wondering whether she was being palmed off or welcomed in. How it must have cost her to add, ‘When exactly?’

‘May the fifteenth. For dinner. Do keep the date free. She will send a proper invitation, but we’d all be so disappointed if you couldn’t make it, so we thought it important to give you notice.’ Three weeks. How clever of the Pondson-Callows. In three weeks’ time, Mrs Foster would have either found someone to marry Vivian and she’d be respectable again, or else her notoriety would have peaked – either way she’d be an interesting guest. Still, it was the only invitation they’d received since Nathaniel had announced his engagement; Vivian knew she ought to be grateful.