‘What I said was, I’m in a good place,’ I say, lifting the Aga lid and sliding the kettle on to the hotplate. ‘It’s that horrid phrase that people doing AA say. It’s what Clare said, that time she came, when she told me that she’d decided not to move to Dorset after all but to Suffolk. To restore a huge Elizabethan or something walled garden, and become self-sufficient, and write a cookbook about English heirloom vegetables, whatever they are. Like curly kale and broad beans.’

I do not say that if Joe does get into Ponsonby Prep after all, the whole kitchen-garden-cookbook plan will, of course, go on hold. Everyone, even back-to-the-land organic plantswomen like Clare, has their price.

I realize I didn’t really eat very much at the wedding – eating canapés standing up doesn’t count – and it’s still a couple of long hours till I make my signature supper of pasta pesto with pine nuts and bacon, and even talking about Clare’s cookbook is making me hungry, by association.

I cut two thick slices of Court Place granary bread to eat with thickly applied layers of butter and honey, which I will wash down with draughts of weak tea.

While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I pick up the linen scrim and start polishing the closed silver lid of the simmering plate. I can’t resist leaning over briefly to admire my bright eyes and rosy cheeks in the mirror-like reflection, and remember the last time I saw Clare.

Rose and Ralph were surprised that she came, but the thing is, I’m no good at feuds. I can’t nurse them, and drop-feed them milk, like prize marrows, until they take up the entire vegetable patch. Life’s too short. And marriage is too long, for that matter. And Clare, to be fair, behaved quite well in the end. So when she called up, I said, well, why don’t you come down? She came, minus Joe, under a fortnight ago. We sat here, in this kitchen. On my territory. She said she was sorry, and that she could not expect me ever to forgive her, or ever to want to see the child, but she wanted as far as she could to put things straight between us. And, most important to me, that she would never ask anything of Ralph again. There were, she assured me, no strings.

And it was then that I surprised myself. When I saw Clare, it was terrible. She looked so drawn, so scared, so guilty, that I couldn’t find it in my heart to hate her at all. Granville, it turns out, had told her about my… procedure. She was almost ill with the guilt, after the Venice picnic fainting thing, and had unreservedly apologized to Ralph for breaking their agreement and promised not to trouble him any further.