“Sorry.” Still leafing through the pages, Lulu paused at a picture of a canapé. “I wouldn’t put caviar on top of smoked salmon, it’s too much fish. It just seems so sort of grown-up, somehow. Having a wedding.”

Looking down at her seated sister, Emma sighed and once again shook her head.

“But we are grown-ups, Lulu,” she said, “and that’s what grownups do. They fall in love, and they get married. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“I suppose they didn’t,” said Lulu. Lulu had never yet been seriously in love. She had had boyfriends, of course she had; but they had never been very serious, and the idea of finding, as Emma had, the person with whom she could consider sharing the whole of the rest of her life—let alone one who would consider spending the rest of his life with her—seemed as unreachable to her as the dreams of flying she had sometimes had as a small girl.

“Someone will come along,” said Emma. “You’ll see. He’ll turn up and it’ll all fall into place.”

Which was all very easy, thought Lulu, with a private little shiver, for Emma to say, she who had fallen in love so happily and with so little effort. Emma liked people and people liked Emma: of course she would fall in love with someone who would fall in love with her, just as someone would fall in love with Sophie one day—Emma was right: everyone loved Sophie. But Lulu was so different from Emma and Sophie; she was spiky and strange, and could not even make Sasha Goncharoff laugh. Who would she ever find whom she could fall in love with—and who in all the whole wide world would ever fall in love with Lulu?

“When he does,” she said, “I’ll tell him to bring extra shaving cream—Sophie’s running short on shampoo.”

Emma smiled. “Food’s coming,” she said. “It’s saucy, so watch out for the book, please.”

Nudging Lulu aside, she removed the wedding book from the table to a safer spot on a shelf, and set down two plates of pillowy pasta studded with jewel-colored vegetables, red cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, and purple aubergine.

Lulu tasted and nodded approvingly. “Nice,” she said. “Next time, you might want to use just a little less crème fraîche and possibly cook the pasta just a minute more.”

“And maybe add a generous helping of shut up and eat or cook your own,” Emma returned amiably. “Mom seems quite pleased about the wedding, actually. I thought I’d get a lecture on patriarchal tyranny and young women as goods for barter, but she actually asked me what I wanted her to wear.”

“Did you tell her no hippie skirts?” Fee was an attractive woman for her age but, in the eyes of her daughters, still a little too fond of the fashions of her youth.

“I’m doing better,” said Emma. “I’m going shopping with her. Will you be my chief bridesmaid?”

“Me?” Lulu narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What would I need to do?”