Charles and Sal had upped and moved to an oast house in Kent when he retired a few years ago, and left her high and dry.

‘Nonsense,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll come and visit.’

But she hadn’t, not yet, though he came up to London once a week and they always had dinner, one way or another.

He’d rung a couple of years ago. ‘It’s Sal,’ he said. His voice had the dull thud of sadness. ‘Cancer. It’s gone to her liver.’ She heard him swallow back tears. ‘She has three months.’

In the event, it was six weeks.

She had other friends that she’d met through work, university administrators like herself. Janet, Beryl, Roger. Jackie, Val, Derek. They met up every couple of months for dinner at the Koh-i-Noor in Warren Street. It was cheap, and crowded, a favourite with students. It served curries in dim light and dark decor.

‘So you can’t see what you’re eating,’ Roger said. They washed down the food with a pint of Kingfisher. These friends had other lives, busy social lives. She envied their hinterland of friendship. Their chums from school, their mates from university. English, she thought, was good that way, it had more words than other languages, even German, could distinguish between a chum and a mate and a pal, a companion, a comrade, a crony. Apart from Charles, Dora didn’t have old friends from her youth like that. No one to reminisce with.

She had acquaintances. That was another word, another level of sociability, not intimates, not kindred spirits, not people you hobnobbed with on a regular basis. People she knew that she could chat to, but not share a secret with. Her bridge partners. People she met at exhibitions, or on courses at the City Lit. Or through music, in her choir once a week, or through a festival.

‘There’s a new Italian,’ Derek said. ‘Round the corner in Store Street. We’re going to try it.’

Their table was at the back of the restaurant, tucked away so the waiters didn’t see them. Service was slow, and they were drinking too much. Dora saw her face in the mirror opposite, flushed with wine. I look old, she thought.

Derek had just come back from America.

‘The papers were full of it,’ he said. ‘The trial. Scheduled for later, sometime in the summer.’

‘Trial?’

‘Don Nichols. Don’t you remember? He kidnapped that athlete, Kari Swenson, to use as a wife. Weird case.’

Dora remembered. It had happened last year.

‘Not for himself,’ Janet said. ‘For his son.’