‘Tomorrow? Please. I hate it when people are vague and never make proper plans.’

‘Well. Yes. Great. Thank you.’

Cheryl picked up her drink and Nell found she couldn’t quite meet her cousin’s eye. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said to Carolyn. ‘Thanks.’

‘It’ll be fun.’ Satisfied, Carolyn took a deep breath and continued to look around the room.

‘We were just talking,’ said Cheryl, ‘about that bloke who used to do the ghost walk.’

‘Oh.’ Carolyn wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘Him.’

‘Funny way to make a living,’ said Oliver, ‘I can’t imagine there’s much money in it.’

‘It was all very – theatrical,’ Carolyn said to Nell. ‘He dressed up as a Victorian gentleman, top hat and cane and – but honestly, it was ridiculous, superstitious nonsense, with people traipsing up and down the yard at all hours.’

‘Hardly that,’ said Oliver, ‘I don’t think he meant any harm. Gina Verrill said—’

‘Gina,’ said Carolyn, ‘is just as bad.’

‘Really?’ Nell couldn’t help herself, ‘in what way?’

Carolyn looked around the table. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said, ‘only, she does like to play the wise woman, doesn’t she? With her garden and her herbs, and her remedies—’

‘I suppose she is a bit of a kitchen witch,’ said Oliver, ‘but then—’

‘It’s just so irritating,’ said Carolyn, ‘the way she tries to tell people what’s good for them all the time, as if she knows best.’

An awkward silence spread around the table.

‘Oh, look,’ Carolyn said, tapping Oliver gently on the wrist, and nodding towards a tall middle-aged man at the centre of a family group. ‘Is that Peter Chappell over there? I didn’t know he was coming up for this, and there’s Laura, too; we should go and say hello.’

‘Good God, woman, we only just sat down,’ said Oliver.

‘Well, how often do we see him these days?’ said Carolyn, standing. ‘Come on, five minutes, just to be polite.’

Nell sipped her water and watched as the two of them crossed the dance floor, Oliver following his wife, the whole room ebbing and shifting around them.

‘She doesn’t change, does she?’ said Cheryl.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Nell, ‘to be honest, I don’t really remember her. From school, I mean.’

Cheryl looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Do you not? Mind you – she was in my year, and I was the year behind you, so maybe you wouldn’t.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Oh, like I said, she doesn’t change.’ Cheryl picked up her drink. ‘She was always a little bit full of herself, maybe. Always keen to hang out with the cool kids.’

Nell watched as Carolyn and Oliver negotiated a complicated round of greetings and introductions. ‘Right.’