People had always said that about Karen and me, falling away from our chatter, puzzled at how we leapt from topic to topic like monkeys in trees, sometimes returning to a conversation we’d left pinned an hour ago, always seamless. I smiled at her over the table, thinking how young she looked in her tight jeans and vest top, identical to Cassie’s. I was wearing a flowery Joules dress. Frumpy. Mum-like, even though it was Karen who’d been a mother first, at just twenty-five.

Karen rolled her eyes at Mike. ‘We’ve got a lot to say to each other, that’s all.’ Now she lived in Birmingham and we were in Kent, I didn’t see her as often as I’d like, and sometimes the need to talk to her built up inside me like a pressure hose, only to explode when we finally met. And I had to leave in – I checked my watch – five minutes. Bollocks.

‘It’s beautiful here, guys. You’re so lucky.’ Karen gazed round at the garden. What the estate agent called mature and developed, which had made Mike snicker, it was the main reason I’d lobbied so hard for this place. The back of the house, a late-Victorian red-brick, faced right into the woods, and the access lane from the front only went past three other houses. It was like being in the country, except the shops of Bishopsdean were only ten minutes away if you cut through the woods. Today, the garden was full of lavender and wild garlic and birds hidden in the trees, little statues poking out from nooks, their faces crumbled by rain. I averted my eyes from the pile of garden waste behind the shed – Andrej, our gardener, had cancelled on us the week before. Family emergency in Krakow. Never mind that. It was amazing that we had a gardener at all. We were lucky. We’d been here only six months and I still had odd moments of shivering pleasure, thinking – I live here. This is mine.

‘Do you do all this, Mikey?’ Karen asked, lifting a macaron to her hot-pink lips.

I laughed. ‘You’re kidding, right. Mike hasn’t been near a lawnmower since 1998. Andrej does it – totally dreamy Polish guy.’

‘I would if I had time,’ Mike said sadly. ‘But when would I get that?’

‘Still keeping you busy then?’

‘You’ve no idea.’ Mike’s law firm had been bought out by Americans earlier in the year, and they expected him in the office late for New York calls and early for Japan. Most days he didn’t get off his commuter train until nine.

Karen turned to me. ‘Well, maybe Ali can keep you now she’s doing so well. Saw you in Good Housekeeping this month! Very cool.’