Yet she was hardly in a position to be critical, she mused, the cul-de-sac of her decade in Oxford coming back at her: the pitiful hanging on because of Igor, the Russian academic who had asked her to write his life story and then swept her into an affair before returning to his wife in Moscow; the subsequent abandoned and useless efforts at fiction; the ad-hoc tutoring to pay bills. Not to mention a social life which, in the three years since moving to London, had somehow deteriorated into a state of lurching oscillation between abject indolence and a sexual promiscuity that she couldn’t have confessed to anyone, least of all her self-contained, snugly nested little sister. A recent nadir had been reached in the form of opening her flat door to the husband of her oldest and best friend from university, dear Megan.

Eleanor dug her fingernails into her forearms as the shame flared. Billy had been in London for a stag do. They had said drunken farewells through a taxi window after a chance encounter in a nightclub. Megan had been many miles away, safely ensconced with their three boys in their Welsh home. ‘No,’ Eleanor had said. But when Billy had reached for the zip on her dress, she had turned, lifting her heavy tumble of hair to make his task easier.

Eleanor had tiptoed as far as the bedroom doorway when Kat’s eyes flew open. ‘Actually, there is something I want, Ellie… something to show you… I don’t know how I could have forgotten. Hang on a minute, while I…’

Seeing the grimace of determination as Kat manoeuvred herself out of bed, Eleanor sprang back across the room to help, only to be met with a warning hand to keep away. She took a step back, aware of the deep, buried reflex of looking after her little sister stirring again.

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Kat assured her tetchily. ‘It’s good to move. The doctors said. No one is supposed to lie around after an operation these days. They get you up and about as soon as possible.’ She stood, pausing to let the crumples in her long white nightshirt fall free, and then moved steadily to a dark green and orange silk kimono hanging on the back of the bedroom door. She slid herself into it with a quick graceful shake of her shoulders, deftly knotting the cord into a big floppy butterfly-bow off her hip. ‘We’re going to my study. Prepare to be surprised.’ She tapped her nose and grinned, looking so restored and pleased with herself that Eleanor did not have the heart to do anything but follow her downstairs.