“I also need lemons,” he told her.

She slid another glance at him.

“Look,” he said suddenly. He lowered his voice. “Could I ask you a big favor?”

“Um…”

“My ex-wife is up ahead in potatoes. Or not ex I guess but… estranged, let’s say, and she’s got her boyfriend with her. Could you just pretend we’re together? Just till I can duck out of here?”

“Well, of course,” Delia said.

And without even taking a deep breath first, she plunged happily back into the old high-school atmosphere of romantic intrigue and deception. She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin and said, “We’ll show her!” and sailed past the fruits and made a U-turn into root vegetables. “Which one is she?” she murmured through ventriloquist lips.

“Tan shirt,” he whispered. Then he startled her with a sudden burst of laughter. “Ha, ha!” he told her too loudly. “Aren’t you clever to say so!”

But “tan shirt” was nowhere near an adequate description. The woman who turned at the sound of his voice wore an ecru raw-silk tunic over black silk trousers as slim as two pencils. Her hair was absolutely black, cut shorter on one side, and her face was a perfect oval. “Why, Adrian,” she said. Whoever was with her-some man or other-turned too, still gripping a potato. A dark, thick man with rough skin like stucco and eyebrows that met in the middle. Not up to the woman’s standard at all; but how many people were?

Delia’s companion said, “Rosemary. I didn’t see you. So don’t forget,” he told Delia, not breaking his stride. He set a hand on her cart to steer it into aisle 3. “You promised me you’d make your marvelous blancmange tonight.”

“Oh, yes, my… blancmange,” Delia echoed faintly. Whatever blancmange might be, it sounded the way she felt just then: pale and plain-faced and skinny, with her freckles and her frizzy brown curls and her ruffled pink round-collared dress.