Sir William had intended to end with a formal toast to his bride, but he had to sit down now, feeling as he did that any more words might choke him and that he would make a donkey of himself by starting to cry. He took Clorinda in his arms and kissed her and the guests began a lively clamour of appreciation, clapping their hands and stamping their feet. And as more strangers appeared at the end of Camden Street, lured by the knowledge that, given the ‘sheer bloody racket’ now disturbing the afternoon, something exceptional must be unfolding there, Jane stood up.

All eyes turned to her. The clapping faded away. Many of the wedding guests knew her, their beloved Angel of the Baths, but they had not seen her for a long time until this day. They had heard that she had been very ill, that her life had almost been lost, and these sufferings of hers were still visible in her features and in her tall frame, which seemed taller than it had ever been by having shed so much flesh from its bones. She was wearing a beautiful brown silk dress, but the bodice hung on her too loosely to do the dress justice, and her dark hair, fetchingly piled up with satin ribbons, was touched here and there with premature greyness.

When she began to speak, however, it was as if the ‘former Jane’, the one for whose healing touch so many people had longed, had re-emerged – in her calm demeanour and the way she held her hands so still and then in the strength of her voice, as she began: ‘I know it is uncommon for a woman to speak on an occasion like this, but let me say that I believe the day is singular enough, uncommon enough, that it invites an uncommon response.

‘My dear father has got married! He has spent, it seems, some twenty-five or more years practising – or more accurately not practising – for this day. Indeed I had come to believe that these long years of non-rehearsal would be so inevitably prolonged that instead of speaking at his marriage he would have to give the oration at his own funeral.’

Laughter crept over the edges of tables, bounced, here and there, off the round bellies of the wine-coolers. It was hesitant at first, then grew a little, as though the guests were waiting for the reassurance that Miss Jane was not as fragile as she looked. She waited for this little laughter to subside, then continued: ‘I suppose I guessed, from Sir William’s fondness for cakes and pastries, that he would become a faithful client of Mrs Morrissey’s tea room. What I did not foresee was the dramatic alteration these sublime substances could cause in his brain, turning him from a sober physician into a veritable fool for love.’

The sounds of mirth rose up again. Sir William was laughing, too but his bride was clutching his arm, afraid, perhaps, that Jane was going to indulge in too much mockery, thus taking something away from the romantic words spoken by the groom a few moments before.