‘Do stop worrying,’ Lili ordered him, after he had spent some time fulminating against the iniquities of the gallery owner. ‘It’ll be all right on the night.’

‘You haven’t seen the lighting,’ he said.

‘We’ll make the man change it,’ promised Lili. ‘You mustn’t bore the bride’s mother with art-world horror stories. She has enough to think about.’

Robert then spoke to my mother about the time when they were young. He only mentioned the gallery once more when Syl arrived, clapped him on the shoulder and asked him what he was up to now.

‘Syl,’ said Lili coolly, as he turned to her, ‘how nice to see you. You’ve hardly changed at all.’

I said without thinking, ‘I wonder what you were all like when you were young?’, realizing as I spoke how young I was myself as four people in early middle age turned to regard me with varying degrees of indignation and amusement.

‘I do wish you’d make some effort to grow up,’ said my mother before she could stop herself, for she didn’t want her future son-in-law to know how much I could irritate her.

‘I keep myself in trim,’ said Syl.

‘I expect you do press-ups,’ said Lili, playfully pinching his upper arm. He did. I had seen him.

‘You look well, Lili,’ he remarked, also without warmth, and I wondered why they had ever been friends since they didn’t like each other.

I drank too much at dinner and missed whole stretches of conversation, noting at one point with tipsy clarity that people who could converse were a great boon to the inarticulate who yet, when in the company of their tongue-tied fellows, felt it essential to say something. As it was, Lili chatted easily and Robert timed his eating to synchronize with her fluency; when Lili stopped talking to eat he carried on, not in the same vein but sufficiently in harmony with her style not to upset the balance of conviviality.

I found it curious that when everyone had finished Robert still had a plateful of food before him and we had to wait as he ate it and Lili talked and smoked her endless cigarettes. None the less I had found the evening reassuring and felt no difficulty in saying that I was sorry but I was suddenly most awfully tired and if no one minded I thought I would go to bed.

Lili said that of course I must, but I made the error of looking at my mother for approval, found none and saw only displeasure at my childish crudity.

It was this that made me unable to sleep, so that coming downstairs, parched with alcohol, for a glass of lemonade, I heard my mother and Lili talking. Syl had left and Robert gone to bed and the old school friends were talking as they must have talked in their manless dormitory: my mother careful, Lili dashing.

My mother said, ‘I’ve never discussed anything with her, I’m afraid. You know...’