Later, she would try to remember her first impressions. Neil’s pale blue eyes, like the eyes of a blind man, his pleasingly crackly dry voice; Lorrie’s smell of vanilla and hand cream, her long pale plait snaking down her back and tied in a blue ribbon at the end; Mary’s plump and creamy face, her pointed pink shoes, her faintly secret smile – the look, Irene soon found, of a woman who is four months pregnant with her first child and has just begun to feel it move; Luke’s wide-apart hazel eyes, his receding hair that was shaved close to his head and was a soft grey-brown, like moleskin; Mickey’s handshake, so hard it made her wince, and his brilliant white-toothed grin which came and went suddenly, as if there was a switch inside him. She was passed from one to the next, saying hello, repeating their names as they were said to her so she would remember them, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t just ‘pleased to meet you’ yet again. She squatted down beside Katherine and asked her how old she was. Katherine stared at her and shuffled closer to Lorrie. Lorrie said she was four and three months, and Irene said: ‘A bit older than my youngest, Aggie,’ and suddenly felt odd to be speaking her daughter’s name in this garden full of strangers.

It didn’t matter what she said though. Words spilled out around her and all she had to do was smile and nod and sip her wine. What were they all going to wear tomorrow? Who was going to make a speech? What was the order of the day? Was it always this hot? They’d have to keep an eye on Katherine, and Mary was going to be as red as a tomato by the time of the party with her pasty skin. Who was going to sleep where – who had bagged the sofa and what about the tent, and who loved sleeping under canvas and who had horrible childhood memories of water dripping through the roof and damp sleeping bags and mosquito bites and cold feet and dying torches and mornings that started at five? And did they all remember …? And wasn ’t it fun…? And look at that huge lizard; look at that buzzard; look at that perfect view and aren’t the evenings the best time of day when they’re like this – soft and dry and blessed after the scorch of the day? Someone pointed at the low, diffuse clouds on the violet horizon and asked Luke what kind they were but didn’t let him reply because someone else said: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’, that was what really mattered on the evening before Juliet and Jem got married. And they all raised their glasses again. Irene looked at Jem and saw him looking at Juliet with such tenderness she looked away.