An expression of pure panic flew across Patrick’s face.

“Phillipa,” remonstrated Ellen.

“Aha! So not thin enough for Pip! I have to come back to you for some more hypnotherapy sessions, Ellen.” Phillipa turned to Patrick with a deadly serious expression on her face. “I suffer the most debilitating addiction to carbohydrates.”

“That’s…” began Patrick. He obviously had no idea how to finish the sentence, and drank his beer as if his life depended on it.

“I have tried to get Ellen to hypnotize my addiction away.”

“She giggles the whole way through,” sighed Ellen, as her mother passed her a glass of white wine without asking what she wanted; she would have preferred a juice.

“Come and have a sensible conversation with me, Patrick,” said Melanie. She patted the stool next to her. “Ellen said you are a surveyor, right? My grandfather had a wonderful collection of old maps he left to me. I think the oldest dates back to about 1820.”

Patrick took his beer glass away from his lips and spoke in his normal voice. “Is that right?”

Mel got Patrick settled next to her, and pushed a plate of bread and salmon dip toward him. Ellen watched Patrick’s shoulders relax as Mel chatted calmly to him, steering him on to stable, factual masculine conversational ground where he could be sure of his footing. She always thought that Mel should have been a diplomat’s wife because of her ability to talk graciously and knowledgeably on any subject.

(Although Mel herself would have found that a very sexist remark. “I’d be the diplomat, thanks very much,” she would have said.)

“Let’s go help your mother.” Phillipa grabbed Ellen by the arm.

“Why, how kind of you, Pip,” said Anne, her violet eyes still on Patrick.

“Oh, darling, he’s just adorable!” said Phillipa as soon as they were in Anne’s pristine kitchen. “I bet he’s one of those strong, silent types, isn’t he? I can just see him on a mountaintop with his surveying equipment, squinting into the sun.”

“No,” said Ellen (although that was exactly the way she liked to imagine him). “He’s not like that at all. He’s very chatty when he gets a chance to be. And he mostly does surveys on houses.”

“Oh, to be young and in love,” said Phillipa nostalgically. “I loved being in love. I always lost so much weight.”

“I remember you sitting in this kitchen and saying, ‘Oh, to be young and in love,’ to Julia and me when we were seventeen,” said Ellen. She paused. “And that means you weren’t that much older than me now!”

“Speaking of Julia,” said her mother, who never required anyone’s help and was now giving the last-minute touches to delicately constructed meals on giant square white plates that would be divinely flavored but would no doubt leave Patrick suggesting pizza on the way home and Phillipa reaching for the breadbasket. “I saw Julia’s mother at yoga on Saturday. She said your new boyfriend has a stalker.”

“The grapevine is so efficient,” said Ellen. It sometimes felt like she’d never left that closed little private-school world of her school days where all her friends’ mothers were on the same committees.

“A stalker!” Phillipa’s eyes popped. “How exciting!”

“Oh, yes, it will be all very exciting, Pip, when my daughter is found dead in a ditch.” Anne spoke from inside her walk-in pantry.

“Is it an ex-lover?” continued Phillipa, ignoring Anne. “A woman he spurned? Or just a random homicidal maniac who has taken an interest in him?”

Anne came out of the pantry and put a bottle of vinaigrette down on the bench top with unnecessary force. “Has this person shown any violent tendencies?” she asked. “Has Patrick reported her to the police?”

“It’s just an ex-girlfriend who hasn’t quite moved on,” said Ellen. “There’s really nothing to worry about.”

She wondered how her mother would react if she knew Saskia had been following them tonight, or if she knew that Ellen had felt a discernible sense of disappointment when they lost her at the lights.

Anne said, “Just promise me you’ll be careful. You always see the good in people, Ellen, which is all very adorable but also naïve.”

Ellen smiled at her. “I must get that adorable tendency from my father.”

Anne didn’t smile back. “You certainly didn’t get it from me.”

“Too right,” said Phillipa and giggled so hard she snorted.

I couldn’t decide where to wait for them.

Patrick’s place or hers. I knew it would depend on what they were doing with Jack for the night. Mostly Patrick’s mum seems to go over to his place and mind Jack, but sometimes Jack goes to her place, and I guess he stays in their spare room. It’s not very fair to Maureen. I remember she used to get exhausted when we left him with her as a toddler. He had her wrapped around his little finger. Although of course it would be different now that he’s eight. I guess he probably just does his own thing—watches TV or whatever. I hope Patrick doesn’t let him watch too much TV. I hope he reads. He used to love his books. I remember once I decided to see how many times I could read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar before he got sick of it. I had to give up after I’d read it to him fifteen times. Every time I finished he’d say “Again?” with the same enthusiasm. I can still see his little fat, flushed cheeks as he sat there on my lap in his red Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas, his lips pursed in concentration as he poked his fingers through the holes where the caterpillar had bitten through the apples.