‘Yes,’ she said, her voice dropping, shyness coming into her tone as she ventured the opinion: ‘The way you look, the way you dress.’ Her eyes flickering over the grey silk blouse Eva was wearing, her blond hair brushed straight and swept over one shoulder. ‘Like Anouk, you are full of thoughts. Moody.’

Eva’s forehead creased into a slight frown. ‘I’m not moody.’

‘Yes, you are,’ Beth countered.

‘You’re hardly one to talk,’ Eva shot back.

‘I’m sorry. My English,’ Corinne said quickly, becoming a little flustered, ‘I do not always know the right word. I meant you are silent – a listener—’

But Eva was already on her feet. ‘I’m only silent because it’s impossible to get a word in edgeways,’ she observed drily, opening the dishwasher and slotting her empty plate inside.

It was true that Corinne’s chatter had dominated the conversation.

‘Where are you going?’ Corinne asked now, as Eva went to leave.

‘I’m babysitting next door,’ Eva replied, and a swift look of hurt passed over Corinne’s face. A minute later, the front door banged shut and the room filled with an awkward silence.

Mark watched as the girl stared down at her plate, the food untouched. He felt a need to apologize for Eva’s rudeness but it was Abi who broke the silence.

‘Your parents must be very pleased,’ she said.

Corinne looked up, uncertain.

‘About your sister’s scholarship?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, but an air of sulky distraction persisted. He watched her unhappily nudging the rice around her plate.

‘Are there any doctors in your family?’ Abi pressed gently.

Corinne looked at her with confusion. ‘No.’

‘I just wondered if Anouk’s choice of medicine was because—’

‘Valentina was an aid worker, and Guy an engineer. They’re retired now.’

This detail interested him. He wondered how old her parents were. The phone call last night from the mother, and now these allusions to a peripatetic lifestyle; he was beginning to guess at an alternative upbringing – anti-vaxxers, home-schooling, living off the grid.

Mark did not think that Corinne was pretty in a conventional sense; her teeth were too prominent, wide gaps between the incisors, and a suggestion of acne in the chaffed redness of skin that lined the grooves on either side of her nose. The wildness of her pink hair was distracting, but really it was her eyes that drew your attention – short-lashed but a deep granular brown. Corinne turned the fork over in her hand and lifted her gaze to meet his, and he noted a splash of orange in the iris, a surprising bloom of colour amidst the brown. Eyes that were playful; they held a spark.

‘They are cousins, you know,’ she told them now, ‘my parents.’ The fractional lift of one eyebrow – a challenge there.