“He’s away working all the time,” said her mum. “She’s about to have another baby. She’s still working. Three kids are a lot even with a nanny. And she has space. And she’s said she can help you.”

“YOU ARE KIDDING, Mum!” was what Sofia had actually said when her mother had tried again. “You are not going to dump the brat on me. I have three kids, another on the way, plus Federico, and a huge case I can’t leave, and you want me to sort out Carmen as well?”

“Want something done, ask a busy person?” tried her mother hopefully. “There’s nothing left round here, Sofia, nothing. The town is finished.”

“I know,” said Sofia. “It’s buzzing here.”

“And your sister . . . I just hate to see her so sad.”

Sofia felt a twinge of guilt. “She won’t want to come. She thinks Edinburgh’s just full of smug old boring posh prats in red trousers.”

“She . . .”

That was exactly what Carmen thought, and she had said so aloud on several occasions.

“I just thought . . .” her mum said. “She pretends everything’s fine, but it isn’t really and it’s killing us. She’s not seeing anyone; she’s not got a job . . . I’m so worried.”

“Why is Carmen my problem?”

“She isn’t,” said her mother. “She’s everyone’s problem. No, I don’t mean that. But I just thought . . . I thought she could get to know your kids.”

Sofia snorted. “She doesn’t even know their names!”

“She does!”

“She didn’t even bother with Pippa’s First Communion. There was an empty space at the table at the reception.”

“I know,” said her mother. That had been a bad one.

“She texted me twenty-four hours later to say ‘Soz.’ Soz.”

“She doesn’t know what it’s like,” said her mother. “Having children. When you think about them all the time. When they are so central to you. She doesn’t get that at all.”

“I know,” said Sofia.

“When you worry and worry about them, and if one of them is unhappy, you would do literally anything to make it better . . .”

“You’re laying it on with a trowel, Mum!”

Sofia’s busy mind, though, was already turning. “I mean, was she any good at her job? Really? Or just hanging about taking the piss like she did at school?”

“No, she was,” said her mum. “Everyone got their bridal from her, back when you still did that and didn’t order it off the internet.”

“Is she still dragging those scary men home?”

Her mother winced. “It’s been tough on her.”

“Remember the poet?”

“I do,” said her mother. “The Sunday lunch where he declaimed a full sex sonnet in front of your father was quite something.”

They both laughed, then stopped because it was mean to laugh about Carmen. But sometimes she brought it on herself.

“Ugh,” said Sofia.