‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ said a bright, sales’ pitch voice behind her. She started, wrenched out of the landscape, and turned. ‘The photographer’s one of our new finds.’

‘How much is it?’ she forced herself to ask.

In its thin black frame it cost £350, about the same amount as her overdraft that she could see no way of reducing. Impossible.

‘It’s too much for me,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

Yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave. She drifted round the shop, riffling through stacks of photos that leant against the white walls, pretending to consider the one of the London Eye reflected in the Thames, or the one of mist smoking off a field of corn.

‘I’d consider knocking ten pounds off,’ said the woman, watching her indecision.

‘Well …’

‘Call it £320, then.’

‘All right,’ said Irene. ‘Quick, before I change my mind.’

The woman lifted the photo off the wall and wrapped it in yards of bubble wrap, Irene handed over her card, trying hard not to think about money, debts, bills, concentrating instead on the vivid afterglow of the photo in her mind. She travelled home with it carefully, cradling it to her.

There wasn’t so much left to do. Pack a few things: a pair of jeans, some canvas shorts and tee-shirts, one jersey although she imagined it would be very hot; an old yellow waterproof that she balled up and stuffed into a small plastic bag, underwear, toiletries, a faded blue sun dress, trainers for the journey, sandals. Swimsuit and goggles, just in case. What should she wear for the wedding? Jem hadn’t told her whether it would be in a church or a town hall and she’d never been to a French wedding, or what kind of party it would be, day or evening, smart or casual, elegant or plain rowdy. He’d just said they’d have speeches and would dance – when had she last danced, she wondered, and she imagined herself kicking off her shoes in some French hall and lifting her arms in the air, letting the music carry her. She gazed at her few dresses hanging in the cupboard. They had all been bought years ago and now looked quaint and drab. In the end she pulled out an unsatisfactory silvery-grey linen skirt and a sleeveless ruffled pink top and added it to her suitcase. Sun cream, factor thirty-five. Sunglasses. She put in a hard-backed notebook and a few pens, two books – an anthology of contemporary poetry and Dickens’ Great Expectations – and selected some music for the car. Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann: angry, whole-hearted women for the road.