‘You’re sure?’ I stood up, but something held me at the chipped wooden table, the wrought-iron chairs we’d picked up in an antiques yard, the plate of pastel-coloured cakes and the floral-printed cups and teapot. It was moments like this I’d pictured when I imagined having a proper house, not the cramped terrace we’d been bulging out of for the past ten years. Crockery. Nice furniture. Friends to admire it all. And of course Karen, my best friend for twenty-five years. I knew that if I didn’t go, I could sit and talk to her until it got dark, and the children went unfed, the work forgotten.

‘I think we can manage.’ Mike leaned forward and poured more tea for Karen out of the vintage china pot. It leaked, but it was such a pretty colour, yellow with blue flowers on it. For a moment, I considered cancelling, speaking to Vix on the phone instead, but this was a big deal. It was my job, albeit unpaid, and if I didn’t do it, I’d just be a housewife who dabbled in journalism between dentist appointments and Sainsbury’s trips.

‘You know it’s important, or I wouldn’t . . . I’m sorry.’

She put her sunglasses – cheap off-brand ones that all the same made her look like a film star – down over her nose and flipped her long dark hair, the same length as when we were students, over her shoulder. ‘Oh, we’ll be fine. We were early anyway. Jakey just wanted to see Cass.’

I looked over at them again. Deep in conversation, the way Karen and I used to be, sitting in a coffee shop for four or five hours and never stopping. ‘We should get them together more often.’ But it was such a trek to Birmingham, and also, it was Birmingham. I invited Karen down all the time but she always pleaded work. I suspected she sometimes couldn’t afford the fare. ‘Does Jake have a girlfriend, anything like that?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing. I’m hoping he’s one of those boys that blossom at uni. Like you, Mikey.’

‘Cheek! I was born blossoming.’

‘Cassie has this boyfriend,’ I said. ‘Aaron. I’m not sure about him. His mother is the most God-awful snob.’