Across the table, Mark watched as Guy ordered a Sancerre for the table, giving a brief nod of acknowledgement when the waiter presented the bottle. He continued to observe the man as he swirled the wine in his glass and tasted. Guy had a heavy-jowelled face like that of a morose-looking dog, a slightly pop-eyed look about him that suggested a thyroid problem. The way he spoke about his own daughter was infuriating. Sure, the girl was slight and skinny, but so was her mother, for God’s sake.

He knew his irritation with Guy was a by-product of his larger fury with his wife.

Their orders arrived and he watched her prise a buttery snail flecked with parsley from its shell and pop it into her mouth, making a little humming sound of delight. Her strained optimism that evening was grating on his nerves. All that steely cheerfulness – couldn’t she see how transparent it was? He ate quickly, barely tasting the food, mulling over the rashness of his announcement to her earlier that evening. What had he been thinking? Small ripples of panic continued to reverberate through him from the detonation. It wasn’t something he had been thinking about – not seriously anyway. And yet, as soon as he spoke the words, he felt the truth in them – the rightness of his statement. It made sense, what he was suggesting, even if he couldn’t quite visualize how it would play out in reality. He tried to block from his mind the look of naked shock that had seized her face when he’d said it, the niggling voice in the back of his mind that the fault was his alone: his inability to be happy for his wife. What was wrong with him? He sat there, joylessly chewing his scallops, washing it all down – the food and the fury – with a long, cool gulp of wine.

‘It’s hard for teenage girls these days,’ Valentina was saying now. ‘All the focus on their appearances. It’s no wonder they put such pressure on themselves.’

‘I know,’ Abi agreed. ‘And it starts so young. In Beth’s year, there’s a group chat called Outfit Of The Day. The way they scrutinize each other – it’s appalling. We tell our girls to ignore it – to simply decline taking part in any of that nonsense.’

‘But it’s hard when everyone else in their group is involved,’ Valentina countered. ‘You don’t want them to feel left out.’