“Exactly,” said Ameerah more softly. “And we said we wouldn’t drift apart again.”

“We haven’t. I keep in contact with everyone . . . well, almost everyone.” Nory frowned as a memory of her and Guy, in flagrante, flashed into her mind.

“Yes, but not all together at the same time! Come on, Nory, we’re the shits and giggles gang, remember? You have to come, or we’ll be another member down.” She pulled a sad face and then said: “Don’t make me benzodiazepine your tea.”

“For someone who works in law, you have a decidedly squiffy moral compass,” Andrew noted.

“My client list is long and varied and each one brings its own education.” Ameerah winked.

“Christmas is our busiest time of year; I can’t just go galivanting off for a jolly in a castle,” Nory reasoned.

“It’s not just any old castle, it’s Robinwood Castle, the playground of our youth. And it’s not just any old jolly either. It’s a week spent with our oldest and dearest friends.”

Ameerah made a compelling case. It wasn’t that Nory didn’t desperately want to spend time with her friends, but it was complicated, and these days she tried to avoid complicated where possible. Still, she was running out of excuses.

“Also, I’ve had sex with the groom,” she countered.

Ameerah threw her head back and laughed. “We’ve all had sex with the groom, Nory!”

This was probably true. The very exclusive private school to which Nory had won a scholarship had been somewhat isolated, and as such provided a rather small pool in which its horny teenage students could experiment sexually; so, the girls and boys of Braddon-Hartmead made sure they swam every inch of it. Charles, the groom, had been generally known to be an absolute hound in the sixth form. Beneath his yearbook picture, the quote read: Most likely to become a porn star. He’d become an investment banker.

“Are you bringing Dev?” Nory asked.

“Yes. Man-Barbie will be accompanying me for the purposes of being eye candy and heroically good in the sack.”

Dev Chakrabarti was Ameerah’s latest boyfriend, a model who was the darling of British Vogue photographers and a well-known figure on the catwalk at the Milan, Paris, London, and New York Fashion Weeks. Ameerah was fond of saying she had neither the time nor the space in her life for men who had something to say, she merely wanted them to look good and fuck better.

“It doesn’t seem fair that he should be a nice person and attractive and good in bed. There must be something wrong with him,” said Nory, screwing up her button nose.

Nory had met Dev several times now and found him to be very good company, quite different from the vacuous men Ameerah usually dated.

“There is,” Ameerah said, stretching and yawning. “He’s a man-Barbie.”