Jocasta rose to her feet to show her out. ‘I have to say, Laura, I think you’re going to be a real asset to our book group. And not only that – I’m having a few friends round next week. Nothing formal, just a bite to eat and some good conversation. I’d be thrilled if you could join us.’

‘When’s that?’

‘Next Friday?’

‘Oh, that’s a shame! I’ve arranged to go back to England to visit my parents for a long weekend. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye properly when I left, and they’re anxious to know how I’m settling in.’

The thing about lying, she’d learnt, mostly from reading fiction, is to keep it as close to the truth as you possibly could. When she’d got home she went straight on to the Internet to look up flights. Then she telephoned her parents.

Laura wished she felt more enthusiastic about this visit. She loved her parents, of course she did, but she was aware she seemed like a cuckoo to them, a small, undemanding cuckoo, but still not really one of their own.

They had arranged to meet her at the airport and were there when she came through the gate, looking out for her in their matching his-and-her beige anoraks.

‘Oh, it’s so kind of you to come and get me!’ she said, feeling a rush of love and hugging first her mother, and then her father, who patted her awkwardly.

‘There’s no sense in wasting money on taxis,’ he said, taking her bag. ‘Have you only got this?’

‘Mm. I didn’t want to check anything in. To save time.’

‘Well, come along,’ said her mother. ‘We don’t want our parking ticket to run out.’

As she went with her parents to the car park she realised how deflated they always made her feel. If anyone else had collected her, Monica, or Grant, say, they’d have been plying her with questions about her new life, full of enthusiasm for her great adventure, or saying how much they missed her. But no, her mother was more concerned about overstaying her time in the car park.

Always she hoped that this time it would be different, and always it was the same. However, she was pleased to be seeing them again; it saved her having to talk about Dermot to people who were only interested in her because of her tenuous connection with him. Not that it had been tenuous, but at this remove, the whole Dermot thing felt like a dream, or as if it had happened to someone else and hurt just a little bit less.

‘Oh, you’ve changed that flowerbed!’ she said as they walked up the path to the house. ‘Didn’t it used to have roses in it?’