‘Oh yeah,’ she murmured, looking up at last, ‘it’s totally cool.’

‘You said how you wanted new challenges, Mum, remember?’

‘Did I? Are you sure that wasn’t some other mother?’ Esther laughed. ‘I’ll let you know what I go for. Wonder Woman! C’est moi!’ She did a silly pose, fists on her hips, which produced a gratifying groan from Dylan, and a glance of total bafflement from his girlfriend.

They had left soon afterwards and Esther had seized Chris’s bouquet, taken it to the pedal bin, but then wavered. The notion had hit her with a thud that even Dylan now had someone. As did Lily. As did Lucas. Their broken little unit was reconfiguring. It was just her, the one who had insisted that the breakage between her and Lucas was too deep, too vast, to fix, who was still in limbo, still alone.

Esther lowered her face into the flowers, letting the velvet-soft petals tickle her nose. That Chris had found out her address was disconcerting, but presumably easy enough to do. He was keen on her and that wasn’t a crime either. For all the slight weirdness of the date, she had found him physically quite attractive. Was having someone better than having no one? That was the bigger question. Esther had dithered and then dropped the card and kept the roses. Thinking of her on her special day. Words could mean everything or absolutely nothing. Only actions counted – another Lucas life lesson.

‘Esther, breathe.’

‘Carole was sick and Shona loves Carole,’ Esther wailed. ‘She had every right to cancel… that is how loving couples behave.’ She hadn’t meant to cry, only to call Viv to wish her and Brian a happy holiday. It was gone ten o’ clock, and instead the litany of the day’s swerves had poured out of her in embarrassing, self-pitying depth, all the discombobulations and the final disappointment that had led to exactly the introspective, empty evening she had feared and tried so hard to prevent. ‘It’s only a daft birthday. It’s late and you’re trying to pack… I am an idiot.’

Viv was sitting on the edge of her and Brian’s bed, laptop open on her knees, a half-empty suitcase behind her. Her soft, sandy hair, clearly treated to a recent cut and colour, neatly cupped the line of her strong, angular jaw, matching the freckles that always came to the fore in the summer, giving her a wide-awake cuteness that Esther could never imagine fading.

‘Birthdays matter,’ she said in her steady way. ‘You need to ice that toe and you’re quite right to be cautious about the flower man, and as for Dylan—’