She was wearing a dress the colour of a strawberry, with a capricious black ribbon at its cleavage; her lips were deep pink, and her hair was tied back, with strands artfully escaping and framing her face. He saw that she was wearing ridiculously high-heeled shoes, with a ribbon round the ankle, that made her legs look slightly knock-kneed; on her wrist she had a large digital man’s watch. He couldn’t stop himself making comparisons – the lush brightness of Frankie’s clothes, and Irene’s habitual grey and black and brown and beige; the softness of Frankie’s flesh and Irene’s thin and frowning face, her scrawny arms. She was only six or seven years younger than his wife, ten or eleven years younger than him, but she seemed to him to belong to a different world – one that he had left behind without even realizing it, and for which he suddenly and fiercely longed.

‘Oh,’ he said, nervous as an adolescent. His drink slopped over the rim of the glass. ‘You’re here.’

‘I’ve been here for ages.’

‘You should have said hello.’

She shrugged and gave an awkward laugh, fiddling with the strap on her dress.

‘Frankie, we’re going,’ a voice said behind them. A man in a leather coat whom Adrian vaguely recognized put his proprietorial hand on her shoulder. ‘I said we’d go for a meal at the Indian down the road with the others.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

‘Don’t keep us all waiting, uh? Here’s your coat,’ he said, and slung it on the chair beside them, then left. Frankie turned back to Adrian.

‘Bye then,’ she said.

‘Goodbye,’ he said stupidly. He remembered now he’d heard something about a long-term boyfriend; an on-off relationship that Karen had told Irene – who’d told Adrian – was a matter of dissatisfaction to her younger sister. He was taken aback by the agony that bolted through him.

He set his glass down and put his hand on the table, steadying himself. She placed her hand next to his and smiled and he shifted a few inches, so his forefinger was just touching hers. Was he imagining it, or did she return the pressure? He felt as though his entire body was throbbing through that single point.

‘See you then.’ She withdrew her finger.

‘I’d like that.’

‘Me too.’

She put on her coat and pulled un-matching woollen gloves out of the pocket, one stripy and one plain; somehow that detail gave him hope, making Frankie seem more accessible. And then she was gone, leaving him breathless by the mince pies. He picked up someone else’s half-empty glass and drained it, feeling slightly sick.