‘To wheedle his way into getting me to work for him,’ she snapped. ‘The man’s a born wheedler. I can see it.’

‘He doesn’t look like a wheedler to me,’ Lorna said. She’d been laying plates on the table, but now she stilled her wheelchair and turned to face her daughter-in-law. ‘Jenny, it’s been two years. We know you loved Ben, but maybe it’s time you moved on?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘He looks quite a catch,’ Jack said, crossing to the door to look-hopefully-out. With a bit of luck there’d be time for a ride for him before dinner was on the table. ‘A Lamborghini at home, eh?’

‘You think I should jump him because he owns a Lamborghini?’ Jenny asked incredulously, and Jack had the grace to look a bit shamefaced.

‘I just meant…’

‘He just meant don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ Lorna said decisively. ‘I’m asking the man to tea.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Watch me,’ Lorna said, plonking a fifth plate on the table. ‘I just know the nice man will stay.’

The night was interminable. Jenny couldn’t believe he’d accepted Lorna’s invitation. She couldn’t believe he was sitting at her dining table with every appearance of complacency.

This was a man international jet-setters regarded as ultra-cool-the epitome of good taste. If they saw him now…

For a start he’d walked in the front door without even appearing to notice Lorna and Jack’s decorations. The Christmas after Ben had been killed, when Henry’s life had hung by a precarious thread, Lorna had decreed Christmas was off. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she’d declared. ‘I’m tossing all my decorations.’

Twelve months later she’d rather shamefacedly hauled out her non-tossed decorations. Jack and Jenny had been desultorily watching television, with Henry on the sofa nearby. They’d been miserable, but they’d fallen on the decorations like long-lost friends. That night had been the first night when ghosts and fear and sadness hadn’t hung over the house, and this year Henry had demanded his grandparents start sorting the decorations on the first day of November.