There were still a few pews piled up against the chapel walls; they pulled them together and Zachary set out his feast of bread and foie gras, Italian cheeses and mostarda di frutta pickle, with baklava and pears and brownies – they used paper plates, and had to share one plastic knife. Everyone wore their coats; the electricity wasn’t switched on yet so they didn’t have any heating, and a stony cold rose up through the brick-red floor tiles crusted with cement dust. The women kept on their gloves because their hands were freezing. Zachary lit candles when the light began to fade, and the children invented some game of advancing into the dark then running screaming back into the safety of the illuminated circle. After a while even Sandy couldn’t resist joining in, inventing things to make the game more seriously terrifying, darkness covering the sacrifice of his grown-up aplomb.

The adults huddled closer for warmth among the candle shadows blooming and elongating on the chapel walls, Christine and Alex on one pew and Lydia and Zachary on another pew facing them, all their knees pressed together across the gap; the restless candlelight seemed like an emanation of their young inner lives, urgent and expectant and sensuous. Christine’s animation – her awkward thinness, her quick attention and talk, the plait of her light brown hair wound round her head and slipping loose – offset Lydia’s self-possession. There was a sheen of new sophistication on Lydia, from New York; she had shed her sulky, punky look and was groomed and sleek, looked the world in the eye with a new candour. But Christine felt with relief that this candour was only another subtle layer of Lydia’s performance. She was not translated wholly into the worldly woman whose part she played.

The four of them were happy to be back together again. The champagne went to their heads, and Zachary had bought dope from Alex’s dealer; Christine was the only one who didn’t smoke, it made her sick. Arguing over Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, which they had seen the night before as part of a retrospective at the BFI, they hardly took the trouble to hide their smoking from the children, who knew about funny cigarettes. Christine said she only really liked the bit at the beginning of the film, when they stop the car in the mist and walk to see the painting in the little church; the woman says it’s so beautiful, and following her the man says he’s had enough of beauty. — But then it gets silly, she said. — It’s just an idea of life, one man’s idea. At every point after that I could see they were actors, acting, and I could imagine the director, directing them.

— Christine’s very literal-minded, Alex said. — She likes the art of everyday.