‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. She married my best friend, who’s infinitely more solvent than I am.’ He grinned. ‘So all’s well that ends well.’

I was taken aback. ‘You don’t mind?’

‘That he’s richer than me?’

‘No, no I meant …’

‘Oh, I see.’ He paused.

‘Sorry,’ I said quickly, blushing. ‘Absolutely none of my business.’

‘No, but then again I brought it up.’ He seemed to hesitate. Then he shifted in his seat: a regrouping gesture. ‘Anyway, back to you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘This colossal sum of money will plop reassuringly into your bank account on an annual basis unless you leave further and better particulars to the contrary. Unless you have plans perhaps to reinvest it on the stock market, or on the roulette tables of Monte Carlo, the horses in Deauville …?’

‘No, no plans. Let it plop.’

‘In which case I’ll leave instructions with the bank for that to happen when all the paperwork’s been seen to. This copy is yours,’ he handed me a pristine document, ‘to peruse at your leisure, and I’ll keep this one for the files.’

‘Right. Thank you, Mr Hetherington.’

We looked at each other. The meeting appeared to be over.

‘Sam.’

‘Sam.’

I stood up, not without a tinge of regret. Tall. Very tall, I thought as he also got to his feet, to shake my hand. I’d forgotten that. Burly almost, with that rugby-player physique, as he came round the desk to show me out. Nice eyes that crinkled at the corners and almost disappeared when he smiled, like now, as he went to open the door for me.

As I passed under his arm, a thought occurred. I turned.

‘Do you read, Sam?’

‘Read?’

‘Yes, books. For pleasure. Novels, that kind of thing.’

He shrugged. ‘A bit. Biographies, mainly. Oh, and Nick Hornby, if he’s got a new one out. Why?’ He smiled down at me.

I smiled too, trying to replicate the crinkling-eyes effect. ‘Just wondered.’

Jennie had had the children for me and I popped next door to collect them when I returned. As I entered her kitchen a clutch of ghosts turned to look at me. Closer inspection revealed that Hannah, Jennie’s youngest, was making cakes and that everyone, including my children, was covered in flour. Jennie looked harassed.

‘You are a star, Jennie,’ I said, going quickly to relieve her of at least two of the young chefs. ‘Have they been all right? No trouble?’

‘Total heaven.’

Archie opened his mouth and started to wail.

‘But of course they always do that when their mother appears. How did it go?’

‘Really well,’ I said eagerly, scooping Archie up, then I became aware of Clemmie’s huge eyes on me as she caught my tone. Perhaps not the moment.

‘Pas devant les enfants,’ Jennie agreed quickly. ‘Tell me later. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘You’re smiling in a funny way, like you’ve got a headache. Your eyes are all crinkled up.’

‘I thought it was attractive.’

‘No, it’s not. Oh – here, Archie did a picture.’ She thrust a still-wet painting into my hand then hastened round the table to where her daughter, on a stool, was tipping an entire packet of currants into the mixing bowl.

‘Not all of them, Hannah!’ she cried.

I left her to it, but her phone rang as I passed it in the hall. I stopped, Archie on my hip.

‘D’you want me to get it?’ I called back.

‘Please. And I’m not here. Hannah – darling, woah!’

I picked up the receiver. ‘Oh, hi, Dan.’

Jennie stopped what she was doing. Her back stiffened, hunched over the mixing bowl. She turned, in listening attitude, as I listened too.

‘OK, hang on,’ I told him. I cleared my throat. Put the phone to my chest.

‘He’s at the station,’ I relayed calmly. ‘But he’s had a teensy bit too much to drink, so he thinks the responsible thing might be not to drive home.’

‘Which station?’

‘Our station.’

‘I thought he was staying the night in Leeds?’

I replaced the phone to my ear. ‘She thought you were staying in Leeds?’ I listened. Turned back to her. ‘The meeting was cancelled because the media buyer’s mother was rushed to hospital. He just had lunch there and came back.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ said Jennie grimly. ‘Bloody man took my overnight case instead of his. I’ve just found his, all packed and ready in the wardrobe. Idiot.’

‘That’ll teach you to have smart his and hers luggage,’ I told her.

‘There’s nothing smart about this marriage, Poppy. So he wants me to pick him up, does he?’ She said testily, her hands covered in sticky gloopy flour.

‘I’ll go,’ I said quickly, as her nostrils began to flare ominously.

‘Bloody man. So irresponsible. Why does he always have to get pissed? And then we’ve got another car sitting at the station – marvellous!’

‘We’ll both go,’ I placated her. ‘And then you can drive the other one back. Come on, Jennie, it’s not the end of the world.’

‘It’s the beginning of the end of the world,’ she grumbled, wiping her hands on a tea towel and grabbing her car keys. ‘Frankie!’ she yelled upstairs as she marched down the hall towards me. ‘Can you come and finish Hannah’s cakes? I’m going to get your father.’

There was a silence. Then: ‘I’m busy.’

Jennie looked fit to bust. ‘Just come down now and look after your brother and sister for me for two minutes!’

Frankie appeared at the top of the stairs. Her face was very pale.

‘Of course, Jennie. Whatever you say, Jennie.’

I followed Jennie down the path to my car.

‘She all right?’ I said lightly as I strapped the children in the back.

‘Frankie? No, she’s a complete and utter nightmare at the moment.’

I was silent. I never found her so. ‘Maybe she feels she’s a bit put-upon? Babysitting all the time? She does a lot.’

‘She’s their sister, Poppy, of course she does.’

‘Yes, but if she’s busy, you know, doing her homework or whatever …’

Jennie snorted. ‘Don’t give me that. She’s up there running up her mobile bill and gassing to her friends about how to pull a boy – or worse.’

I looked at her as we pulled out.

‘I don’t mean that,’ she mumbled. ‘You know I don’t mean that. But she’s tricky, Poppy. It’s a tricky age. And I lose patience sometimes.’

‘But you encourage her, you know, in her work, and everything?’ I persevered.

‘Well, I don’t sit testing her on trigonometry, if that’s what you mean. I assume she’s of an age when she’ll get it done and still manage to help me out occasionally.’

I fell silent as I drove. There weren’t many areas Jennie and I disagreed on, but this was one of them. I knew Frankie felt like unpaid labour and I deliberately overpaid her whenever she sat for me, which I knew she enjoyed: the peace and quiet of a house where young children were put to bed early, my kitchen table all to herself. No demands made on her, no rows, just silence. We drove on past the fields where the race horses galloped, then swung into the station forecourt, which was only a mile or so down the road, but, with Dan’s track record, not to be driven from under any circumstances if he was even vaguely over the limit. Jennie’s rule, obviously, which he’d sensibly adhered to, and I was about to remind her of this, but a glance at my friend’s stony profile beside me dissuaded me. It was a look I’d seen on her face a lot lately, and one she’d never worn when we were younger. Now it would flit across her face regularly, and I tried to put my finger on what it was: oh yes, resentment. Something else too. A faintly hectic gleam to the eyes. Defiant, perhaps. Something Peggy said the other day almost drifted back to me, but not quite. About Jennie. Something surprising. When we were talking about forming the book club. What was it? Laying no claim to a hair-trigger memory, though, and having been recently struggling under a blanket of black cloud, I couldn’t remember. I sighed. Lost for ever, no doubt, beneath the fog of shock and numbness and downright crippling depression I’d been feeling at the time. I gave myself a little shake. Thank heavens that was over, anyway.

‘At least it’s on time,’ I said cheerfully, as heads began to appear up the steps from the platform and commuters dribbled out of the exit. We were a tiny station and not many people alighted here; most got off at Milton Keynes, further down the track. We waited.

‘Still no Toad,’ she said darkly.

‘There he is!’ I said, relieved, as the top of his head, hair swept back like an ocean wave from a high forehead and piercing blue eyes, came into view. He looked a little sheepish, I thought.

‘What is he wearing!’ gasped Jennie as the rest of him appeared.

From the waist up he was in a perfectly normal linen jacket, shirt and tie, but something strange was going on below. Instead of trousers, something pale pink with daisies clung to his legs and hung around his crotch. Woollen, like leggings.

‘It’s my jumper!’ cried Jennie.

It was indeed. Very stretched. And Dan seemed to be sporting it upside down with his legs through the arms, as it were. Hairy shins, grey socks and brogues protruded. As he approached us, I realized that to his left, very much walking with him, escorting him, perhaps, was a policeman. Dan’s habitually jaunty, devil-may-care attitude seemed to have deserted him. He looked pale; stricken, even.