Isobel realised that Alex would never think Blaise was good enough for her. She would never be able to explain to him about that nugget of Blaise’s wholeness and goodness she was attracted to, seeking it out inexorably as a Geiger counter under all the layers of his stuffiness. Blaise’s education was Eton and Balliol; his mother was a barrister, his father farmed and hunted. Isobel wanted to ask him, if you had children, would you have to have all that for them too? And although they hadn’t actually even kissed yet, except for hello and goodbye, she lay awake worrying about her principles, whether if they had children together her commitment to state education would give way in the face of Blaise’s intransigence, if he were intransigent. When she’d recovered from her sickness bug she asked him round to her place, and as they poured their third glass of wine her mother rang. Isobel turned her phone over, but then while Blaise was in the bathroom listened to her messages, just in case. — Something happened last night, Christine said in a heavy voice, irritatingly portentous. — I’d like to talk about it. But it’s all right, don’t worry. Could you come round?

— Would you like me to go with you? Blaise asked when she told him.

— Oh no, hell, Isobel said unhappily. — Perhaps I’ll just ignore it.

— You could do that.

She hesitated. — We’ve had this awful thing recently, that’s the trouble. We’re all so sad, Mum’s sad. Someone very close to us died, the last person you’d ever think would die: so full of force. He just dropped dead one day in the middle of talking in his office. He was my dad’s best friend, my best friend’s father, Mum’s best friend’s husband.

— It sounds like one of those puzzles, Blaise said ineptly. — You know: ‘who is my father’s brother’s mother’s husband’s grandson’, that kind of thing.

Isobel didn’t know whether she ought to break up their evening early, to go to her mother; she stood agonising in her flowered dress, hugging her bare arms tightly in a chill from the open window; their plates were still on the table, smeared with the remains of Thai noodles. She wasn’t a good cook: Blaise’s meal, which she hadn’t been able to eat, had been much more impressive. This story of their family misfortune, she thought, must seem like a final clinching stroke of the bad news she brought. — Actually you remind me of him a little bit, she ploughed on. — I mean, you’re not really alike at all: he was Jewish and arty and extrovert. And much older, of course. But I suppose he was sane and solid, and you are.