‘And I’m proud of you too, darling,’ said Christine, who still found it hard to believe that the teenage tantrum queen had a job, and a nice, proper boyfriend, in Paris. She hated to admit it, but having a couple of near-death experiences seemed to have improved her daughter. After watching Will almost die, and then facing her own mortality at the hands of Rivelli’s henchmen in Tokyo, Isabelle had emerged a calmer, brighter person, much easier for a mother to love. Thanks, in no small part, to that superhero boyfriend of hers who, today, was looking more Clark Kent than Superman.

‘Cheers, Christine.’ Dan was here at Isabelle’s side, in a navy blue suit that went rather well with his girlfriend’s outfit. He had the look of a man who had been rather successfully taken in hand.

John said nothing, just kissed her on the lips, and went off to take some canapés out of the oven. While Isabelle and Christine had been dressing, he’d been cooking. He was just as good in the kitchen, thought Christine, as he was in the bedroom.

And so the day had come – the day so long dreamed of and longed for, the day she thought she might not live to see, when Christine Fairbrother would take silk. It was not how she thought it would be. The cast of characters was different. Andy was absent, long since relocated sine die to Dubai, where he could amass a tax-free fortune and salve his disappointments with ex-pat women and overpriced liquor. Christine wondered if he was still using the old ‘my ex-wife doesn’t understand me’ line. She wondered if he was looking after himself, or running to fat. She didn’t much care one way or the other; what feelings she still had for Andy amounted to little more than a benign curiosity. And gratitude, of course, for fathering her children. Beyond that she could not in conscience go.