She didn’t stand out, the place was full of women dressed up gorgeously. Lydia, in a white lace dress by Helmut Lang, seemed almost to have attained the aplomb of a consort, becoming a still point around which all the circles moved – while Zachary went everywhere in the crowd, greeting and blessing. Even when they were students, at parties in basement flats with warm white wine in plastic cups, Lydia had had a way of settling herself on a mattress on the floor as if it were a throne where she received petitioners, dispensing favours or cutting them off. Christine was as disdainful in her judgements as Lydia and yet didn’t know how to convey that she too was clever, superior, easily bored. She knew she seemed too eagerly apologetic, too quick to blame herself for any faltering of interest; she probably ought to be less amenable, if she wanted to be taken seriously. Weren’t great artists always difficult? At least the lovely spaces of the new gallery were so crowded that quite literally you couldn’t be left standing alone. Pushing past so many interesting strangers, she scrambled out onto little islets of acquaintance and then regretted it, felt stranded and looked round surreptitiously for rescue.

From time to time the press of bodies parting afforded her a moment’s glimpse of Alex. She expected him to be prowling, disaffected and moody. He hated parties, and she’d made him wear a suit which she’d found for him in an Oxfam shop – dark wool, fitting him perfectly. But he wasn’t moody, he was talking to people, making himself charming, looking as if he was amused and in his element. The teaching course was good for him, she thought. He was taken outside himself, learning to perform for others. Christine saw how he was touching with particularity the women he was talking to, fingertips on the inside of an elbow or palm on a bare shoulder – perhaps she ought to be afraid of this, but was just curious. He was striking in his new suit, which had played its trick of conferring authority. She thought she’d have been attracted to this clubbable, suave, urgent Alex, if he’d been a stranger. And would he have liked her, in her blue dress?