It took me a long time to choose what to wear. I tried on skirts, tops, different shoes. I stood in front of the mirror, examined myself critically and didn’t like what I saw. I was pale; there were tired smudges under my eyes; my hair hadn’t been cut for months and was long and wild. In the end I put on a dress that looked a bit like a pleated chocolate-colored sack, ribbed tights and my only pair of boots, although one of the heels was a bit loose. I put an amber pendant around my neck, because Greg hadn’t given it to me, and tied my hair back into a messy bun. I put on muted eye-shadow, eyeliner, mascara, lip gloss. Finally, when it was after eleven o’clock and a pale sun had come out from behind the clouds, I looked enough like somebody else to venture out of the house.

FOR A MOMENT I thought Frances was going to hug me, but she contented herself with a hand on my shoulder and a warm, relieved smile.

“Hello,” I said. “Sorry about yesterday.”

“I’m just pleased you’re here now. Come downstairs. Johnny’s made us a pot of coffee.”

“Johnny?”

“Yes. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Anyway, it’ll be more interesting for you than just trawling through the papers.”

“What is it?” I asked. Trawling through the papers was exactly what I wanted to do: I hadn’t finished with Milena Livingstone yet. Her chart was incomplete. My need to know about her had not been extinguished by that single coarse message scrawled so carelessly on the back of one of her menus. Now I wanted to know why—why had Greg fallen for her? What did she have that I didn’t?

“I’ve got to dash out.” She waved her hand vaguely in the air. “Crisis. But I’d promised Johnny I’d go to sample some of his suggested dishes, make the final choices. You can go instead of me.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Beth did it?”

Frances frowned. “Beth isn’t here yet. Besides, she doesn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t know anything about food.”

“You eat, don’t you?”

“Kind of.”

“Then it’ll be a treat for you. Are you hungry?”

I tried to remember when I’d last eaten a proper meal.

“Good. That’s settled, then,” said Frances, as if she had read my mind.

Johnny arrived with the coffee. He kissed me on one cheek, then the other, and said I was looking lovely. I stammered something and caught Frances’s amusement and something else. Tenderness?