‘You should do it,’ Corinne said, and his gaze moved to her, surprised by the intervention. ‘I love your models. You are really talented.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, and Beth snorted again.

‘Mum doesn’t think so. She thinks his stuff is boring.’

Mark frowned, wounded by her comment. Abi was already protesting vehemently against the charge, but Beth stood firm. ‘Didn’t you hate his stuff when you first met?’

‘I think that’s an exaggeration,’ Mark said coldly.

‘We met in college,’ Abi explained to Becca and Ross. ‘We were both involved in a DramSoc production of Our Town. I was acting, and Mark designed the set. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, was it?’ she asked him teasingly.

The truth was, when he first knew Abi, he’d found her overly opinionated, critical and fussy. She had worn her blond hair tied back in a ponytail that had a jaunty bounce to it – even that was annoying. But it was her reaction to the reveal of his set that cemented his negative feelings towards her.

‘It seems a little bland,’ she’d said, the corners of her mouth tugging downwards as she cast her underwhelmed gaze over the artwork he’d spent weeks working on.

Bland.

He could barely stand the sight of her after that.

‘Some years later, we met again,’ Abi explained now, ‘at a Radiohead gig. You liked me better then, didn’t you?’ she challenged flirtatiously.

Mark remembered how he’d found himself next to her in the pub after the gig, and she’d said: ‘Well? Do you approve?’

‘What?’ he’d asked, confused by the quizzically amused expression on her face.

‘You’ve been watching me all evening. Have I changed in the intervening years? Become more bearable?’

She was smiling up at him playfully, waiting for him to speak, and he’d felt a queer lurching inside, a sudden flash of intuition.

Oh no, he’d thought, contemplating his future, his fate. Not her.

‘Yes, I liked you better then,’ he admitted, feeling like he was surrendering something with those words. From across the table, Corinne was still looking at him with her clear-eyed gaze.

At that moment, Eva came into the kitchen and both Ross and Becca looked up.

‘There she is!’ Becca declared. ‘How’s the study going?’

Mark, distracted by his thoughts, didn’t listen to the answer Eva gave. Instead, he found himself caught in that moment before lunch when Corinne had come into the studio, her lightness and ease, the bright flare of colour she brought into that drab room. A butterfly in a cave, he wondered, or a canary in a coalmine? His attention only returned to the kitchen, and the conversation, when he heard Becca say:

‘You should get Ross to teach you!’ and he saw Eva’s cheeks flush with colour.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, and Eva rolled her eyes.

‘Driving lessons, Dad.’

‘I can teach you.’