But he said nothing more, instead offering me a brief smile before returning to his desk and sitting back down in front of his screen.

I turned away. ‘Well, don’t work too late,’ I said, with surprising calm and taking cold comfort from the fact that I had at least now moved beyond resentment to a point of acceptance. There was, after all, nothing I could do, except cross my fingers and focus on the meagre hope that Alison’s Plan B would somehow include me.

Chapter 36

‘Say when, June.’ I smiled brightly, topping up her glass from a bottle of red, as I continued to focus upon fulfilling my role as co-host to the increasingly large crowd of wine-and-cheesers now packing Giles’s kitchen area. I was determined not to spoil things for Giles and was aware that showing or sharing any Cameron-related anxiety would almost certainly create awkwardness between himself and Kerry, as their respective best friends – yet again – prepared to lock horns.

June stared at the slowly rising level of alcohol with the intensity of a surgeon performing keyhole surgery, before shouting, ‘When!’ so loudly and suddenly that Bill and Patrick visibly jumped and Stan put a hand to his heart.

‘Edith is not hard of hearing, June,’ he said gently.

She laughed, putting her free hand to her head and patting the black bob, with blunt-cut fringe, which was perched there. A bright red dress and an out-there pair of yellow Mary Janes completed a startling, but joyous, new look. She had the appearance this evening of Miss Marple after a Mary Quant makeover.

‘Well, it’s so busy and noisy in here, isn’t it?’ she said, looking around the tightly packed room. ‘I was afraid Edith wouldn’t hear me.’

‘Are we sure all these people actually live in the avenue?’ asked Patrick. ‘Who’s that bloke by the fireplace with the black eye, for example? I’ve definitely never seen him before.’

‘You know him, Patrick,’ said Stan, glancing over his shoulder. ‘That’s young Cormac, from number 47, who’s married to Jeanette with the red hair. Although, sadly, they are getting divorced. He just doesn’t look himself tonight because he’s been in the wars.’

‘Yes, a pan fell on his head again yesterday,’ said June, looking across at Cormac with kindly concern. ‘That’s the second time in a month that’s happened.’

‘Because what we don’t want,’ continued Patrick, refusing to be sidetracked by Cormac’s unusually bad luck, ‘is people taking advantage of our homes and hospitality the way they do our parking spaces. I counted twelve vehicles parked in the avenue today, which were not registered to residents or their regular visitors.’ He drained the bottle of beer which Giles had handed him less than ten minutes earlier.

‘How do you know who the cars are registered to, Patrick?’ I asked, with genuine interest. ‘I thought only the police could run that kind of check.’