They go down to eat. The stairs lead into a large kitchen. There is an old double-doored American fridge; an Aga; a yellow Marmoleum floor; bright prints on the pale blue walls; burgundy blinds; a long oak table. The lights have been dimmed: candles are lit on the table. Judith asks Jomier to sit at the far end between Annabel and the second woman, Marion, who is small and scrawny and cannot conceal her curiosity about Judith’s new beau. She is the partner of Gus, the stocky publisher: they met on the Internet five years before. She has two grown-up children by a husband, Simon, who is now married to Ursula, an art historian writing a book on the Russian cubist painter Natalia Goncharova. Ursula is twenty years younger than Simon. She wants a baby. He does not. Marion’s curiosity about Jomier competes with the pleasure she takes in talking about herself. This suits Jomier. He gives non-committal answers to her questions and then asks: ‘And you?’

She laughs – hilariously. ‘Me?’ She tells him her life story. Parents academics – north Oxford – went to the same school as Judith – lost touch with her after they both married – Simon and Beresford chalk and cheese – met up again later in life. ‘It’s a bit the same as with you and Judith, isn’t it? You knew her when you were young?’

‘Yes,’ says Jomier. ‘Though not well.’

‘She married too soon. So did I, for that matter. I was twenty-four which in fact didn’t seem young in those days. In fact it seemed quite old and I was pregnant and in those days it was bloody difficult to get an abortion and in fact my parents were quite religious so it would really have upset them if I had though I’m not religious and I probably would have done if it was as easy as it is now. Stupidly I once said this to Joe –’

‘Joe?’

Marion grabs the bottle of red wine in front of her in the table, tops up Jomier’s glass and fills her own. ‘My eldest son. He took it badly. Stupid of me, really. But stupid of him too because of course as soon as he was born I loved him to bits and still love him to bits despite what we’ve been through but at that time he was just a cluster of cells in my womb and I can hardly be blamed for being in two minds as to whether I wanted that to go on growing if it meant marrying Simon whom I did love, or thought I loved, but who I knew was a little dodgy because he’d had oodles of gay experiences at school – starting with the cricket coach at his prep school and then on to public school where he was cox of the eight which so far as I can make out means that you are buggered by all and sundry . . .’