I nodded and Rohan said, ‘Great.’ Mili was his sister. Stunningly beautiful and achingly cool, she’d done everything ‘right’ in Meena’s eyes; despite being a couple of years younger than Rohan, she was already married with a two-year-old daughter. I was glad she was coming; when Mili turned up with the baby, the focus of attention was generally on little Sofia and not on my own childless state.

I flicked through the menu while Rohan caught up with his mum. Outside, the sun was squeezing itself sideways through the gaps between the buildings of the High Street, its rays softer, kinder, than they’d been earlier in the day. A knot of drinkers mingled outside the pub, their voices rising to compete with one another so the overall sound that reached us here in the restaurant was loud, rowdy and punctuated with shouts. Music ebbed and flowed from the open windows of flats above the shops: the thump of a beat, the riff of a saxophone, the repetitive squawk of a child practising scales on the violin. Pedestrians strolled arm in arm in the uniform of summer: shorts, vests, slip-dresses and slopping flip-flops blackened by the city’s pavements.

Suddenly I was aware of something moving faster than the prevailing speed of the street; something carving a way through the pedestrians and the mob outside the pub. I tensed involuntarily, but then I saw the signature scarf flying like a flag: Mili.

My sister-in-law surged along the pavement and into the restaurant through what would have been the window as if she’d been caught up in a hurricane, her hair flying loose, chiffon scarf swirling about her. She was wearing a classic ‘Mili’ cocktail of brightly coloured East-West clothes and eyes followed her as she swerved between the tables, hands raised in apology to those she bumped. Gold studs gleamed in her ears, a tiny diamond studded her nose, and all her fingers were ringed in gold. Mili worked as a buyer at John Lewis, in the homeware department, and was one of those people who ‘had an eye’ for fashion and style – I knew no one who could throw things together as randomly as her yet somehow make everything look so well put together.

‘Hi-hi-hi,’ she said, giving her mum a quick squeeze and a showy kiss on the cheek. ‘And, hi, Love’s Young Dream.’ She gave Rohan and I each a proper hug before sliding into the seat next to Meena. ‘How’s it going?’

I watched Rohan’s face drop with a thud that hit me in the gut. ‘No Sofia tonight?’ he asked.

‘School night,’ Mili grinned. ‘She’s at nursery now. Needs to get into a routine. So, no. Jay’s on Daddy duty.’

‘I don’t know. These nurseries,’ Meena shook her head, ‘breeding ground for sickness. You mark my words, she’ll be sick all the time now. You should have…’