— And who’s going to have it then? Grace challenged. — To sleep under.

Christine had imagined hanging it up somewhere. — It would look gorgeous against a white wall.

— No, we have to use it, Grace was adamant. — Not just look at it. We have to touch it every day and love it and spill things on it. It has to be part of life. Mum should have it, shouldn’t she? She can sleep underneath Dad’s name, to cheer herself up.

— We should drink to the completion of the quilt, exclaimed Christine. — Where’s that bottle of the Czech brandy Zach liked? The kind Vaclav Havel drank when he met up with Polish dissidents in the Harz mountains.

— Not the Harz mountains, Mum, Isobel said. — They’re in Germany.

— Isn’t she just like her father? Christine appealed to the others. — With the two of them, it’s like being trapped for life inside a general knowledge quiz. Can you imagine just how corrected I perpetually feel?

— The funniest thing happened to me, by the way, Isobel said, smiling round at them all. — I meant to tell you. I had a date for once – someone at work had fixed it up for me, friend of a friend.

Isobel was so wholesomely attractive, Christine thought with a rush of love, in her neat blue cotton skirt and print shirt, with sturdy bare brown legs and sensible brogues. Her appearance made you imagine preparatory rituals, bathing and tending and ironing; a distinctive tight fold under her green eyes was edged in dark lashes as densely and precisely as if in pencil. — When was this? she said anxiously. — I do like to know, darling, just in case.

— At the weekend, Mum, don’t be silly: it was fine, Sunday lunchtime. But you just won’t believe my bad luck, it’s so typical. He was really quite nice, we drove out to a pub on the river in Henley, and we were both thirsty. He bought two pints of beer, we were standing up together, we chinked glasses. Maybe I was nervous, but really, we didn’t chink that hard. And my glass just broke! Around the middle, so that the bottom fell out neatly onto my feet and both of us were simply deluged in a whole pint of beer, from the waist down. I mean, I hardly knew him! It wasn’t exactly an auspicious beginning.

— It was a baptism, Iz, Lydia pronounced. — I think he’s the one.

— He was very nice about it, Isobel said. — But I haven’t heard from him since.