‘I’m doing some decluttering,’ explained Jocasta, handing round glasses with an inch of chilled white wine in the bottom. ‘So do help yourselves to anything you’d like. Otherwise they’ll go to the charity shop.’

Laura recognised most of the books. Not one of them would she describe as a ‘good read’; all of them were a ‘virtuous read’: the kind of books you could boast of having read at dinner parties.

‘I can never get rid of books I’ve enjoyed,’ said one woman, picking over the selection. ‘But maybe you didn’t enjoy these?’

Jocasta was now handing round olives the size of bantam eggs. ‘Of course I keep the serious literature, but this is just light reading.’

Laura heard Shona snort into her wine.

‘I could sell the books, of course,’ Jocasta was saying now as she swayed her perfect figure on to another sofa that was not only cream, but suede and pristine. ‘I spend a fortune on them. I love to support writers.’

‘Don’t sell them to a second-hand bookshop then,’ said Laura, wishing she hadn’t opened her mouth before she even started. ‘The authors don’t make a penny and it’s their intellectual property.’

‘Oh.’ Everyone was staring at her. She really did not want to get into a discussion about how authors were paid. ‘So if you’ve excess books,’ Laura said, ‘you should give them to a hospital or something.’

‘Or a charity shop?’ asked one woman.

‘Or that.’ Laura had a feeling this wasn’t the perfect solution for writers either, but she couldn’t remember all the arguments that had been dinned into her by an author once when she worked at the bookshop.

There was some low-voiced chat and the books were picked over and some claimed. Eventually Jocasta took charge. ‘Can I call us to order? Has everyone got a drink?’

‘I’d quite like a top-up,’ said Shona boldly.

‘And me,’ said a couple of the other women. ‘We all walked here, so we don’t have to worry about drinking and driving.’

You could tell, thought Laura, that Jocasta only poured very small amounts into the glasses not because she was mean, but because that was how you should pour wine.

‘OK, we’ve all got drinks,’ Jocasta expressed her disapproval very subtly. ‘Who would like to go first?’ She looked round the room. ‘Well, shall I? Because I chose the book?’

‘Why not?’ said one of the women.

Laura began to feel even more tense. Supposing they didn’t like Dermot’s book? It felt utterly personal to her, and she thought it would have done even if she hadn’t met him – let alone all the other stuff that had gone on between them.