“Delighted you could join us, Jonathan,” Colonel Rupert Lacey said, before turning to greet Petra, who was embracing her friends. He kissed her and pulled out her chair for her.

“Champagne, Petra?” Edward Tremayne gestured to a waiter to fill her glass.

“Yes, lovely, Edward, thank you.” Petra looked around the table. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“Only two weeks, dearest,” Diana corrected. “Rupert and I were in Hampshire talking with Kimberley Diamond’s trainer.” Her eyes shone as she looked around the table. “He thinks she’s ready for a big race. He’s been trying her out on some local courses at very minor events, keeping her out of the public eye while she trained. He thinks we should spring her on the public at Ascot. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Which race?” Fenella inquired, taking a sip of her champagne.

“The Queen Anne Stakes,” Rupert replied.

“Yes, and we’re going to have a big party in the Royal Enclosure,” Diana said eagerly. “You’ll all be there, of course.”

“Of course we will,” Petra and Fenella assured her almost in unison.

Fenella picked up her menu. “What do we usually eat here?”

Her husband glanced at his menu before regarding his wife with a half smile. “If I tell you what you usually eat you’ll accuse me of telling you what to order,” he said.

Fenella laughed. “He’s only saying that because once I said how nice it was to dine with a man who didn’t tell me what I wanted to eat.”

“Oh, Rupert does that all the time,” Diana declared. “I’m quite used to it now.”

“In that case,” her husband said, “You’ll be having the foie gras and coq au vin.”

“Impossible man,” Diana said. “As it happens it’s exactly what I’d like.”

Petra joined in the general amusement but once again she felt that stab of aloneness, of being an outsider in this circle. It was different when it was just herself and Diana and Fenella, then it was like the old days. But was it? Even as she asked herself the question she knew the answer. It wasn’t quite the same. Marriage had added another dimension to her friends’ lives, a different prism through which they viewed life. And Petra didn’t have that dimension, or that prism.

Diana said suddenly, “I have to visit the ladies’ room.”

“Me too.” Fenella pushed back her chair. “They’re so splendidly luxurious here. Coming, Petra?”

Petra pushed back her own chair. “Yes, I’m coming.”

Rupert watched the three of them weave their way through the tables. “Why do they always do that?” he asked.

“It’s almost tribal,” Edward said. “A kind of pack response.”

“All for one and one for all.” Jonathan added his pennyworth. “But I think Diana had something on her mind that she wanted to talk about with the other two.”

“It was a rather sudden departure,” Rupert agreed.