‘It’s understandable,’ she said. ‘It’s a tough gig that you’ve set for yourself.’

I shrugged. ‘No tougher than anyone else has got it.’

‘But it can’t be easy for you, keeping on top of everything with all of your . . . commitments.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know,’ she said. ‘Your career.’

I felt my hackles rising. ‘What about it?’

‘It must be hard, doing the mom thing and working full-time as well.’

‘No,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘That’s not it. Not at all.’

‘I mean, it’s great and everything, but it can’t be easy fitting it all in. I don’t know how you guys do it.’

Maybe it was lack of sleep, but I sensed a certain tone in her voice that I didn’t like. Rowan seemed to sense it too, jumping in before we slid into a full-blown argument.

‘Hey, Jennifer?’ Rowan said. ‘I promised Odette I’d bring you down to the pool this morning to watch her doggy paddle – do you want to come now?’

‘Sure,’ Jennifer said, following her out of the kitchen.

Izzy and I exchanged glances after they’d left the room, both smiling and shaking our heads as if to say: a classic Jennifer comment. We went out onto the balcony and sat down at the end of the table, in the shade of a large umbrella.

‘So this is great,’ Izzy said with a smile. ‘Just like old times.’

‘How are you finding it, being back in Europe?’

‘Like I never bloody left,’ she said with a small smile. ‘Same as it ever was. So how are you really, Kate? Honestly? Now it’s just the two of us, you can tell me.’

‘Me? I’m fine.’ I shrugged, smiled back. ‘Same as I ever was.’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. It’s just Lucy, like I said.’

She took a sip of coffee and studied me for a moment. She had always been the most perceptive one of us, the most likely to see what was hidden. And she never held back, never left things unsaid – even if meant a difficult conversation.

‘You just look a little bit . . . I don’t know. Not quite yourself.’

‘Busy day yesterday, you know. Travel day’s always a bit of a slog, isn’t it?’

‘That just means you’re not travelling enough, woman. You need more practice.’

Izzy had spent much of her late twenties and thirties travelling and working overseas, teaching English as a foreign language, first in sub-Saharan Africa, then in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and other parts of south-east Asia. Some years ago, on one of her extended stays in Tibet, she had become a Buddhist and it seemed to have made her calmer, happier, less bothered about all the things that most people spent so long worrying about.