‘Twenty years this year.’

‘Didn’t you want any children or anything?’

‘I couldn’t have any. We tried for a long time. Every month I thought, this is it. A baby. But it never happened. Eventually we went to see a specialist and I found that I can’t conceive properly. It’s long and complicated. I had three miscarriages while on fertility drugs. It’s funny, you know, but when I heard of people giving birth to six children at once, or five, it reminded me of an animal, like having a litter of puppies or something. Yet I would gladly have given birth to twenty in the end, I wanted a baby so desperately. I wanted a child for Georgio, because he wanted a child so much. I used to worry myself sick in case he left me for some fertile beauty with big breasts and child-bearing hips!’

Caroline laughed with her, but the girl’s face was filled with sorrow for her newfound friend.

‘Then, as the years went on, we talked about it less and less. In the end it was a self-defence thing. Our friends’ children started growing up, and we were getting older, and then I tried having a test-tube baby. I lost it at four months, a perfectly formed little boy. I lost heart after that, and so did Georgio. I was depressed, so very depressed. Georgio was like a child himself in many respects. I looked after him, our home, everything. I never had to do a day’s work. I even have a live-in housekeeper. My idea of a heavy day was doing the gardening - and I have a man who comes twice a week to cut the lawns and roll the tennis court. Another young man comes to clean the pool once a month. Outwardly I have everything, inside I’m empty. I have no children, and my husband is doing eighteen years, and now he wants me to do something I’m not sure I can do. Not even sure I want to do. It’s all a mess, a terrible mess.’

Caroline was dumbstruck, unable to think of any words of comfort. She liked this woman enormously, liked everything about her, from the way she dressed to her lovely voice and kind nature. She felt as though Donna was centuries older than her, not in years but in experience of life. Listening to her loneliness was like a knife-thrust in the heart. She glanced at her own children, little Michael Joseph with a face covered in tomato sauce and a mouthful of hamburger, and her daughter, her Chivonne, with her blonde pigtails and gappy front teeth. She thought of her high-rise flat in East Ham and suddenly felt grateful for all she had. Being a natural mother herself, she recognised a kindred spirit in the well-dressed woman sitting opposite.

‘What does he want you to do?’