‘You know what I mean. Deathly of mood, not deathly of appearance.’ Kate’s blonde hair and glowing skin always looked as if experts had finished buffing them only seconds earlier.

‘It’s funny how meeting someone’s close family can bring into focus everything that’s wrong with them,’ said Charlie. Kate had insulted her; being made privy to one of Charlie’s more obnoxious thoughts was her punishment. ‘You suspect there’s something deeply amiss about a person, and then you meet their parents and think, “Now I understand.” I wonder if Simon, having met mine, can see clearly everything that’s wrong with me. And bound to get steadily wronger as I get older.’

Kate chuckled. ‘Sometimes it’s possible to defy both nature and nurture,’ she said. ‘Look at Sam—he’s the kindest, most considerate man alive, and his parents are lazy, selfish tossers. His brothers and sister too—the whole Kombothekra clan. When we have them round they sit immobile in armchairs like the human equivalent of a druid stone circle while Sam and I wait on them hand and foot. They do nothing for themselves. They’re worse than my boys have ever been, even as toddlers.’

Charlie couldn’t help smiling. It was reassuring to know that even women with silky blonde hair had problems.

‘They’re going to get what’s coming to them,’ said Kate, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’m not inviting them for Christmas dinner this year. They don’t know it yet. I do, and I’ve got nine months to gloat in secret.’

‘It’s only the first of March. Please don’t put Christmas in my head.’ What would Charlie and Simon do? Would he want to spend Christmas Day with her? Would it be a merging of the Zailer and Waterhouse families? Charlie felt her blood temperature drop by several degrees.

The situation with Sam’s folks had to be dire, she thought, if Kate was planning to withdraw her hospitality. She was the sort of person who seemed to want nothing more than to drag strangers in off the street and cook for them, then insist they stay the night. Charlie had been a virtual stranger when Kate had first started to demand her presence at Kombothekra family meals; now, after countless such occasions, Charlie supposed she had to regard Kate as a friend. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend who made staggeringly good apple and cranberry crumbles, could it? Kate always said that whisky was the crucial ingredient, but in Charlie’s view it was even more crucial to start off as the sort of person whose notions of pudding extended beyond unwrapping a Cadbury’s mini roll.

‘Did you and Sam have an engagement party? Of course you did,’ Charlie answered her own question. ‘I bet it was at one of your houses.’

Kate dragged herself out of whatever revenge fantasy had temporarily consumed her. ‘My mum and dad’s. Huh! Sam’s parents wouldn’t . . .’ She stopped. ‘But you didn’t want the party at yours, you said. Simon didn’t want it at his.’