‘Offended? Give over. She’d have had that many guests, she wouldn’t have paid me a second thought. Probably glad to have one less mouth to feed,’ Alison replied, peeling faster than ever and with a certain amount of huffiness. ‘I’m very happy for them to have been married fifty years – how lovely for them – but I don’t see why I should have to trog all the way up the A59, to some village hall, in order to say that. For a glass of lukewarm wine in a room full of people I don’t even know!’

Her voice was rising. ‘All right, all right,’ Robyn said, backtracking. ‘I only meant—’

‘Your dad was the party-goer, not me,’ Alison said defensively. ‘And I had a whole bridal party to do yesterday morning anyway: seven-thirty start, barely time for a cup of coffee, and I didn’t get away again until nearly two. After that, I just felt like putting my feet up and catching my breath. You can’t deny me that, surely.’

‘Okay, I’m not criticizing,’ Robyn said, even though she had been, in her head. She prised open another peapod and there was silence for a moment. ‘I don’t remember that about Dad – him being a party animal,’ she added humbly. Her mum barely mentioned Rich, Robyn’s father, who’d died of a sudden heart attack when Robyn was just eight years old. Younger than Daisy. One day he’d been there, as normal, and then the next morning Robyn had woken to find her mother catatonic with grief and her grandmother in the house, stuffing clean pants and socks into a bag, saying that Robyn was going to have a little holiday with her for a few days. He was just thirty-five – so bloody young – and she had been paranoid for years that the same fate awaited her. ‘Does my heart sound okay?’ she always asked anxiously at the doctor’s, braced for history to repeat itself.

‘Well, in the early days he was,’ Alison said vaguely, her eyes misting over. ‘But anyway.’

Robyn wanted to ask more, greedy for any new nuggets of detail about her father that might illuminate her own paltry memories, but sensed her mum closing down the conversation, as she so often did when he was the topic. ‘How are things with you?’ she asked instead. ‘What’s the latest news?’