You asked for news of me and mine, so here goes. I have also been lucky with how things turned out. I stayed as a fashion dogsbody for a few more years but gave up work after I got married in 1998. Hard to believe that was fifteen years ago! My husband Howard is a Fund Manager with Bouvray-Smith. We live near a place called Fairfield in East Sussex, not a million miles from Broughton, which perhaps you remember?! We’ve got three kids, Luke, who’s 13 and brainy like his dad, Sophie, who’s 11 going on 25(!), and Evie who’s 7 and probably most like me! We are also lucky enough to have a lovely house and garden – lots of space for the kids to run around in. We even have a pool, though the English weather probably means we don’t use it quite as much as you do yours! Howard has to commute, which is a pain, but apart from that life is pretty good. I do a bit of dress-making but otherwise spend my time being a mum - like your wife Donna, by the sounds of things – running around after the little darlings!

Well, Nick, thanks for your email. I can’t imagine you forty years old, I must say. Though of course it will be my turn in a few more years!

Eleanor is visiting at the moment and says hi back.

Take care and all the best for the next forty!

Kat (Gallagher these days, but I still use Keating sometimes. Was that how you tracked me down?)

‘By the way, you know if you end with a question he’s more likely to write back.’

‘Is he?’

‘It’s human nature.’

‘Is it?’

‘Do you want him to write back?’

‘Dunno.’ Kat frowned. ‘Oh, I guess not. Take it out then.’

‘Out it goes.’ Eleanor deleted the second sentence in the bracket.

‘Oh, and add a kiss please. Just one. Lower case. Everybody kisses everybody these days after all, don’t they? A kiss means literally nothing.’

‘Does it?’ Eleanor murmured, adding one small cross next to Kat’s name and resisting the urge to point out that Nick’s signing off had been much more formal. Kat could still have any man she wanted, she reflected, with a twist of weary pride. Age, motherhood, illness made no difference. One snap of her little sister’s fingers and men fell like nine-pins. They always had. They always would.

An hour and a half later, after tea and some delicious ginger biscuits reputedly made by Hannah the babysitter, they were on the doorstep, conducting farewells in the glare of Eleanor’s taxi headlights. Kat had by then showered and changed into a grey glitter-flecked mohair jumper, loose black trousers and bright red Converse trainers. The jumper shone in the light, catching the sparkle in her eyes. She looked radiant, transformed.

‘Would you come again,’ she said suddenly, ‘if I asked?’