“It’s a Saturday. They don’t work weekends unless we’re hosting a thing, which has never happened,” I said, getting off the sofa.

She made a face. “You are hosting a thing. This is a thing.”

I frowned at her. “A thing is when the prime minister of the Bahamas comes over. This is family.”

Bea pulled off the trick of furrowing her brow with irritation but also looking vaguely pleased. Gemma and I exchanged grins before I headed out and found Freddie in the foyer, a giant stuffed elephant wearing a blue bow tie sitting at his feet.

“Hi,” he said. “Can you help me? I did all right up the steps but my arm still hurts a bit, and God forbid I go back into a cast because I went overboard at Hamleys.”

Together, we hoisted the elephant and carried it into the living room, where Olly’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“I love it!” he said. “I mean, Danny will love it.”

Freddie laughed, giving Olly a hearty handshake and pecking Lacey on the top of her head. “I really bought it for you two. How are Mum and Dad?”

“Thrilled to be out of the house,” Lacey said, stabbing at a piece of salami on the charcuterie board that Nick had put together. “Also excited to eat deli meat again.”

“I hope that goes double for unpasteurized cheeses,” sang Gaz, bustling in with an equally pretty board of selections from the Food Hall at Harrods. Cilla stole a piece of Brie as he passed, and then, when he stopped in mock annoyance, fed him half.

“Ah, brilliant, Freddie’s here!” he said, dropping the tray with a clang on the table.

“A phrase hardly ever uttered in polite society,” Freddie said.

“Fortunately, that doesn’t apply here,” Nick said. “Other than Danny.”

Lacey snorted. “Please. That kid blew out a diaper ten seconds after I changed it. He has no manners.”

“Cheese, Knickers?” Freddie said casually as he carved off a piece and plonked it onto a cracker. “Since you’re trapped under something heavy? The Stilton is nice and smelly, just the way you like it.”

“I’d love a piece, and maybe a slab of that truffly Camembert while you’re at it,” Nick said, gesturing with his elbow.

“Coming right up.”

Their manner was easy, but I knew they were aware of how much everyone in the room was rooting for this reconciliation to be real. Cilla and Lacey and I launched into aggressively casual-not-casual chatter about nursing bras, a subject about which two of us knew nothing, just to try to defuse their sense that they were being observed—even though of course they were.