Marianne laughed. ‘What does a family woman look like?’

Simon surveyed her smooth, olive complexion upon which a few lines were there to tell the tale. The dark eyes that right now seemed opaque and unfathomable. And the silvering hair that was at odds with her youthful shape. Did she work out in a gym every day to stay that way? Somehow he doubted it. She wasn’t the sort to spare time for her looks, nor need she. It was the woman herself though, not her looks, who’d got to him. And without trying to.

‘My idea of a family woman,’ he replied, ‘has a somewhat careworn appearance you don’t have. My sister has two daughters, both divorced, and never stops worrying about them and their teenage kids. I myself haven’t experienced the pleasures and otherwise of parenthood. Only a marriage that ended in my forties and put me off getting involved again,’ he added after a pause, ‘which I guess I’m now doing.’

‘And with a female you seem to have incorrectly assessed,’ said Marianne. ‘Not that you’re alone in making the mistake you did. I’ve often been told I come over as a dedicated career woman. I admit that I am, if that’s what a compulsive writer who’s never been in it just for the money can be called.’

She ate a sliver of marinated mushroom and put down her fork. ‘But that isn’t the whole of me, Simon. I’m also a family woman in more senses than just the parental. One of a big clan, and there’s rarely a dull moment – for want of a better way of putting it.’

‘Does that mean your family sometimes get in the way of your work?’

‘And how! For some reason I’m the one they come to with their problems. My hostessing my brother’s dinner party was how he solved his when his wife opted out, and I can’t say I looked forward to that evening.’

‘But looking back?’

‘I’d say it was a milestone in my life.’

‘In mine, too.’ Simon raised his glass. ‘You and I still have far to go before we know each other, Marianne. Here’s to our step into the unknown!’

Simon’s introduction to Marianne’s involvement with her family was not long in coming.

She had invited him in for a brandy when he took her home, neither sure if what they felt for each other would be physically consummated on their first date, the only certainty that they did not want to say good night.

They were seated together on the living-room sofa when the telephone rang.

‘In my family, at this hour, that could be an emergency,’ Marianne said, rising to answer it.

It was past midnight, and an emergency it proved to be.

‘Can you come, Marianne?’

‘I can barely hear you, Lyn, this must be a bad line—’