Chloe lowered her brow. ‘I thought you’d be …’ She stopped, unable to think of a polite way to finish her sentence.

Max seemed unperturbed. ‘My parents have a nice four-bed in London. This is a different fucking league. As far as they’re concerned, I’m the Artful Dodger.’ He pulled his keys from the ignition. ‘Are you okay?’

There was no point in lying. ‘I’m nervous.’

‘I’m not surprised. But it’s fine. We go in, they tell you where your room is, you unpack, even if you’re only staying one night. Then you go back downstairs at four thirty, there’ll be tea, we’ll all stand around talking, then you’ll get ready, and then we’ll all get so drunk that we won’t remember what happened, only they’ll call it getting “blotto” and it’s such expensive booze that you’ll actually feel okay tomorrow. As long as you call it a loo not a toilet and you’re nice to the dogs, they’ll like you.’ He opened the car door. ‘Now come on. Otherwise they’ll try to convince Zadie we’re having a dalliance so that she’ll dump me.’

Chloe laughed a little too loud.

It was just as Max had described. He had opened the huge front door and pointed her up some stairs to a pretty little bedroom at the far end of the first-floor corridor. It had twin beds, a proper dressing table with a stool, and an en suite bathroom that contained the kind of claw-foot bath that her mother would have given a kidney for. It was almost dark outside now, but she could see the outline of a swimming pool, all tucked away for winter. The house sat in the middle of two wide, square lawns which gave way into woodlands. Was all of this theirs? What a place to have grown up.

She put her clothes into the wardrobe, remembering Max’s words about unpacking even though she wasn’t staying long. He had been more helpful than perhaps he realized in his induction to how the Listers lived.

The clock on the mantelpiece said four thirty so, haltingly, she made her way downstairs, first to the hall, then, following a hum of conversation, she opened a door into a warm orange room filled with people, adults milling around in jeans and sensible jumpers, teenagers splayed on sofas in hoodies and denim mini-skirts, various dogs lying in front of a roaring fire. Max was standing by the farthest window. A group of children were piled up on a sofa, their shoes on the cushions, hands filled with cake.