When she first walked into the restaurant she thought Sarah hadn’t arrived yet – all the tables were filled with strangers – but then she saw a plump little overdressed matron, sitting alone, was smiling at her.

‘Come sit down, dear,’ Sarah said. ‘You look wonderful.’

‘So do you,’ Emily said, but it wasn’t true. In St Charles, wearing country clothes, Sarah might still look her age – which Emily quickly calculated was forty-one – but here she looked older. Her eyes were lined and shadowed and she had a double chin. She was slump-shouldered. She had evidently been undecided about which of several pieces of bright costume jewellery to wear with her cheap beige suit, and had solved the problem by wearing them all. In the past year her teeth had developed heavy brown stains.