‘If you only do things when you’re ready, you’ll never do anything at all,’ Maggie chastised her the following weekend. They were putting an end to their time as flatmates with a takeaway from their new favourite restaurant, the curry house at London Bridge. ‘I mean, do you think most people in Britain are ready to experience the flavour sensation of an onion bhaji? No, I think not. But once they try it, they’ll bloody love it.’ She held one up. ‘This, my dear, is the future.’

‘Did you really just compare my newly married life to an onion bhaji?’ Sylvia burst into laughter, and then tears started running down her cheeks. Maybe it was just the heat of the spices. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mags.’

‘It’s not like you’ll never see me, silly.’ Maggie bit into the bhaji. ‘But I can’t believe you’re making me get a new flatmate. It’s going to feel strange to have another girl rattling around.’

‘She’d better like Columbo.’

‘That’s one of my interview questions.’ Maggie picked up her beer with a paint-speckled hand and Sylvia felt a pang of sadness. No longer would she find flecks of pink and white and green on her socks at the end of each day, the detritus of Maggie’s absent-minded habit of picking dried paint from her clothes, her hair, her skin, something that had always driven Sylvia crazy but now only made her want to cry.

‘Oh, I got you a present.’ Maggie put down her beer and left the room, returning a minute later with a wrapped package, clearly a book.

Sylvia tore off the wrapping paper and laughed when she saw the title. Superwoman by Shirley Conran. ‘How to save time and money,’ she read the front cover. ‘How to be a working wife and mother.’

‘I thought you might need it.’

She knew Shirley Conran by reputation, of course, as the former women’s editor of the Daily Mail. And she knew this book spent weeks and weeks on the bestseller lists after it was published last year. But she’d never got around to reading it. It didn’t apply to her, she’d thought. She had no house to keep, no children to look after. She was unmarried and unencumbered. She didn’t need a how-to guide about housekeeping.

‘It’s about shortcuts; you know, like avoiding buying clothes that need ironing.’

‘Right,’ Sylvia said.

‘Listen.’ Maggie took it from her and opened it to the first page. ‘The purpose of this book is to help you do the work you don’t like as fast as possible, leaving time for the work you enjoy,’ she read.

Maggie looked up and her face was so full of hope and optimism that Sylvia felt a lump rise in her throat. Maggie, lovely Maggie, she cared so much.