The wedding was registry office, with a reception afterwards in the Samuels parents’ Hampstead garden – on an autumn day of showery fitful sunshine, fine rain floating in the gleams like dust motes, clouds liquid with light, thick cobwebs in the hedge glittering with raindrops. Zachary’s parents had turned out to be wonderfully worldly, with a house full of modern art. There had been some private consternation, because of the wife he had chosen; generously and for their son’s sake, on the day this was tidied out of sight. They had taken on Zachary’s passion for Lydia, along with her languid delivery and odd ironies and white wedding trouser suit and non-Jewishness, without betraying the least flicker of anything but warm welcome and interest. It was Lydia’s family who hung back, suspicious of what their daughter was getting into. Tibs and Pam would only thaw into their party mood, Lydia gloomily predicted, at just that point in the evening when all the other guests were taking leave and everybody wanted to go to bed. Zachary insisted his parents would love that, drawing up chairs for a cosy chat, getting out the cognac and cigars. — It won’t be cosy, Lydia said. — My mother will still be on her high horse for some reason she’s forgotten: for fear, really. And she takes Babycham in her cognac.

— Trust me, Zachary said. — Everything will work out.

Christine was avoiding Alex, though he seemed to be trying to talk to her; the more champagne she drank, the more numb and dull and solitary she felt. He cornered her eventually at the buffet when, very late for dessert, she stood indecisively before the wrecked white damask cloth and the ravaged remains of the chocolate gateau and fruit salad, not fancying anything. She’d never seen Alex in a suit before: it looked cheap and too tight on him, the shiny grey material creased at the elbows and across the shoulders. His jacket was unbuttoned and he’d spilled something on his shirt. — You’re thin, he said, doling out syllabub into her dish, sticking it full of finger biscuits. – You need feeding up.

— I don’t even know if I like this, she protested, pushing the dish back at him.

— You need to feed yourself so you can make more drawings. I hear that Zachary’s keen on your drawings?

— I don’t want to talk about them.

— He’s going to ask that friend of his, isn’t he? If she’ll show them in her restaurant, where they put exhibitions on the walls. Quite a big deal, he says.

Anxiously Christine said she didn’t have enough to show, she couldn’t just make them to order. Anyway, Zachary and Lydia were moving to New York, so there was no point in starting anything. — I could take care of you, Alex said.

— You, take care of me? Oh dear.

— What’s so amusing?