Lily distracted them by asking for help working a map app, letting them explain with teenage loftiness even though she knew perfectly well how to work it. Anxiously, she watched Carola wipe her eyes on her coat cuff.

Her apprehension almost matched Charlotte and Emily’s by the time Carola came back to the table wearing a wobbly smile. ‘Well,’ she said, flopping back to the bench and giving Lily back her phone.

‘What’s up?’ Charlotte demanded again.

‘What?’ Emily echoed, looking suddenly young and unsure and fidgeting with her mittens.

Carola’s laugh shook. ‘Tina had Owen in the pub. Owen! He’s been mugged.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘He lost his phone and laptop and was kept in hospital for a couple of days. Then he had several days of creasing headaches and couldn’t drive. He didn’t have his contact list backed up anywhere. He’s still off work so didn’t get hands on another computer to send me a message. Once he was well enough to get a mate to drive him to our house on Monday, we’d already gone on this trip. He thought he’d have to wait until we got back but then it occurred to him to go into the pub, thinking someone there would have a way of getting a message to me.’ Suddenly she was beaming and laughing. ‘I haven’t been ghosted!’

‘Oh, has he been out of touch?’ asked Charlotte, proving how little teenagers needed to know about their parents’ lives.

Maybe only Lily got how euphoric Carola was feeling. ‘That’s brilliant!’ she said, giving Carola a hug. ‘So you’re still a thing?’

Carola nodded, happiness bursting from her. ‘Very much so, apparently. I’m going to call him later so we can talk properly. I feel awful for thinking so many bad things about him now and I can hardly wait to get home now to check he’s really OK. Such severe concussion’s worrying.’

Lily talked to Isaac out of the corner of her mouth like a comedy gangster. ‘Don’t take a bribe from her to leave early. It’s only Friday and we’re singing at the Christmas market again on Saturday and the advent brunch. That minibus doesn’t leave till Monday, got it?’

Isaac mimicked her delivery. ‘You gotta make it worth my while, honey.’

She grinned, signalling with her gaze that she had plenty of ideas in that direction. Judging from the glow in his eyes and the way his hand came to rest on her thigh beneath the table, he received her message.

When the last crumb of the last waffle had been eaten Lily checked the time. ‘Stephen told me about this shop that sells cuckoo clocks and people go on the hour to hear all the cuckoos going off.’

‘Awesome,’ breathed Emily. ‘Mum, can I have a cuckoo clock for my room as an extra Chrissy prezzy?’