A waiter, arriving with their bill and a card machine, surveyed the landscape of the table to try and assess where to place it. Esther dived into her bag for her debit card, while her father, too, turned to fumble in the inner pocket of his jacket for his wallet.

‘No. Thanks, both, but this is on me,’ Lucas said, signalling to the waiter that he would take charge.

‘But, Lucas, we agreed,’ Esther protested, as surprised as she was pleased, while also noting how far Lucas held the bill from his eyes in order to scan it. A tenderness rippled through her. He was getting long-sighted. Time knew no mercy, not even for her driven, self-centred, impossible ex-husband.

‘Come on, now, Lucas,’ Patrick chipped in gruffly, starting to count out twenty-pound notes in his meticulous way, fresh from the cash machine by the look of them.

‘Patrick, no.’ Lucas’s voice was stern and affectionate. ‘Please. I insist.’

There were murmurings of appreciation from everyone. Astrid seized the moment to flick Esther one of her looks, bringing her back down to earth. Here is your super husband being super, it said, the one you threw away instead of forgiving and bringing to heel. Esther flared her eyes in response, remembering more vividly than she ever wanted to one of the many reasons why the two post-Cambridge Amersham months had been so grim. Her mother’s unsympathetic temperament was something she was long used to, but there had been a daily dose of old-fashioned asides to contend with too, along the lines of a wife’s duty being to stick by her man – crushing for their lack of empathy, but also suggesting the possibility of some hiccough in her parents’ relationship of which she longed only to remain in ignorance. Offspring, even middle-aged ones, were not designed to be curious about the sex lives or misdemeanours of their parents. Having to ignore that fact, in order to explain to Dylan and Lily the reasons behind the separation, had been horrible. With his grey-faced, stumbling apologies, Lucas’s mortification had been palpable, while both children went from stunned silences to weeping, hurling recriminations to which he had no answers. Lucas had deserved every moment, and all that followed, but the pain of being the one to shatter Lily and Dylan’s protected version of the world had, for Esther, been harder to leave behind.

The bigger truth with her mother, Esther reminded herself wryly, was that she adored Lucas. Just that morning she had flushed like a bashful teenager at his compliment on the chicness of her outfit, eyes sparkling, telling him he was talking nonsense. Except it wasn’t nonsense. Her mother did look tremendous for her seventy years, Esther mused, affectionate admiration flooding her as she waited for Astrid to look her way again so she could smile to make the peace. It wasn’t a day for battles.