Or was it possible, she thought, as she went out to the terrace, that Naomi was way ahead of Martha? That her need to shake things up was a sign that she was already thinking of the future?

As perfectly delicious as the meal was – the garlic and rosemary-infused spring lamb was tender and slightly pink, the new potatoes glossy with butter, the green beans and caramelised baby carrots perfectly cooked, and the gravy silky smooth – Naomi was struggling to enjoy the meal.

In her head she had everything she wanted to say seamlessly worked out, but it was picking the right moment to break her news to the girls that was proving more difficult. ‘Don’t force it,’ Ellis had said, ‘just let the conversation flow and you’ll say what you need to quite naturally.’

Really it wasn’t a big deal. So what if she had met somebody? It happened all the time. Why not to her? Because, no matter their age, children were children and they simply could not conceive of a parent being anything other than a boring old parent. They weren’t meant to change or behave differently.

That much was obvious in the way Martha had reacted to her hair. When Naomi asked her hairdresser yesterday to give her hair a complete makeover, Sandy, her stylist for more than eight years, had asked her if she was sure. ‘I couldn’t be surer,’ Naomi had replied. ‘I want to be a new me.’

While the girl had set about the business of colouring and then chopping away the unwanted hair, Naomi had watched in fascination as it fell to the floor. When she left the salon with a smart smooth bob, she felt a lifting of her spirits and about twenty years younger. Her shoulder-length hair – how Colin had always liked it – was now a thing of the past. With a definite spring in her step, she went straight into a neighbouring boutique and tried on the linen dress she had seen in the window earlier. Staring at her reflection in the fitting-room mirror, turning her head to the right, then to the left, and checking how the dress looked on her, she had felt ridiculously pleased with herself.

At home, and as he said he would when he was back from visiting his mother, Ellis called in to see her. ‘Wow!’ he’d exclaimed. ‘Don’t you look amazing!’

She hadn’t needed to ask him if he meant it, she could see it in his face, and in the way he put a hand to the now exposed nape of her neck and kissed her.

As though the new dress and haircut had given her the necessary courage, she told Ellis that she had decided to tell her daughters about him.

‘I’m glad,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want us to hide anymore. I want us to start making plans for our future. Our together future.’