The conversation moved on to social media, the pernicious inroads it was making into adolescent development. Mark zoned out. He was thinking instead about his own daughter, Eva. The memory of their afternoon together still glowed inside him. It occurred to him that there would not be many more such opportunities for him to connect with her before she went off to college, if any at all. Already, he felt the bonds that tied her to the family loosening, as if she was even now drifting away.

From the corner of his eye, Mark saw Guy emptying the last drops of the bottle into his own glass, then signalling to the waiter for another. Who was supposed to be driving them home? Mark wondered with a little rise in anger. Pointedly, he emptied what was left of his own wine into Abi’s glass.

‘I’m happy to drive,’ he announced, but she ignored him and the conversation drifted on, some nonsense about installing spyware on the kids’ computers to monitor their activities. They had moved on to their main course, various joints of meat and slivers of fish steaming from plates in front of them.

‘What about computers?’ Abi asked. ‘Beth spends so much time on hers.’

‘Corinne, not so much,’ Valentina answered. ‘But her phone—’

Guy grunted, spearing some meat with his fork.

‘Instagram,’ he said. ‘It’s all she cares about.’

‘We’ve seen some of her posts,’ Abi said. ‘They seem charming.’

‘Charming!’ Guy laughed. ‘You are very naive.’

Mark saw Abi’s cheeks flush, her back straightening. He knew she was bristling.

‘Why? The pictures she posts, they’re very playful and girlish. And yes, I do think they have a certain charm. They’re warm, sunny, optimistic.’

‘But they are not real,’ Guy declared, enunciating each word carefully for emphasis.

He put down his fork. ‘When you see a picture of Corinne grinning by a lake, or swinging “playfully” from a lamppost, waving a bunch of flowers in the air, you think that is a spontaneous moment that just happened to be caught by the camera?’ His tone was heavy with disdain. ‘No. It is carefully planned. Each image meticulously thought out – calculated. You see a laughing girl jumping in the sunlight and think she just happily skips through her sunny life? But that one picture has involved countless changes of clothes, and perhaps an hour or two of jumping and clicking, jumping and clicking, all in search of this perfect shot.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Mark asked. ‘Surely there’s a sort of artistry to it. A vision, a commitment.’ Personally, he liked Corinne’s Instagram feed. Some of the images were clumsy and sentimental, immature. But they made him smile.

‘Who takes the pictures, though?’ Abi asked. ‘I’ve often wondered.’

‘Whoever she can persuade. She’s very good at it, you know,’ he remarked coldly. ‘Manipulating others to carry out her demands.’

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ Mark said.