The bruschetta was crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, tangy with oil and sharp with garlic and rosemary. The tomatoes were bright and fat, clearly bought from some organic farmers’ market rather than the local supermarket. It even smelled vibrant, but it was impossible to eat. The boys laughed as they picked it up, spilling tomatoes on to the plate. Verity busied herself, flitting around, clearly not intending to let a morsel of bread pass her bee-stung lips. Chloe pushed bits of tomato around with her fork, not wanting to risk an oil spill down the front of her dress, unwilling to look messy as well as overdressed next to Verity. She broke off a piece of bread and carefully placed it in her mouth. She needed to eat something; her head was swimming. Two glasses of champagne already down, despite the fact she didn’t like it, and she was now part way through a glass of buttery white wine.

‘So, Rav, where are you from?’ Verity asked him, smiling over the candles. People did this to Rav a lot – assumed that because of his name and the colour of his skin he had a huge family straight out of central casting hidden in some terraced house in west London, full of laughter and women in saris making roti.

Chloe had often wished that were the case. She had indulged in fantasies of how that might be, of being welcomed into the middle of a loud, loving rabble. But not a chance.

Rav’s mother hadn’t been to Pakistan since the seventies. She and his father lived in a pristine apartment in Zurich, where she and Rav visited them twice a year, under extreme sufferance. Photos of Rav, their favourite son, lined the surfaces and the entire place smelled like Dettol.

On their first visit, nearly a decade ago now, Chloe had got her period on the sheets of the bed in the enormous white guest room. Horrified, she’d crept down the corridor to Rav’s room, woken him up and whimpered what had happened. He had kissed her forehead, sneaked the sheets into the laundry and sent Chloe back to bed. ‘I’ll fix it. Go back to sleep,’ he’d said.

‘I’ll fix it’ was Rav’s mantra. He took care of everything. Labours of love – Chloe knew that. He did it to make her life easier, happier, better. But just occasionally, when she realized that all the morning’s post had been opened, dealt with and all the bills paid before she’d even looked at it, she wondered if there was any harm, any danger, in letting Rav do all of it. How would she manage if a day came when she had to do it by herself?