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conversation.
    “The Sacred Feminine?” she asked, staring at her nails and wondering how Lara got hers so long and shiny. Jen had never really been the long-and-shiny nail type and she didn’t particularly want to start now, but she was still curious. “I thought
The Da Vinci Code
was fiction.”
    Jen heard her mother snort contemptuously.
    “Fiction? Is that what you thought? The greatest conspiracy of our time uncovered, and you think it’s fiction?”
    Jen smiled to herself as Harriet launched into a defense of the book and its theories.
    “And you think it’s going to help you get more business?” Jen asked eventually.
    “I know it will. I had the idea when I was choosing crystals with Paul and it almost felt like a vision, it was so clear.”
    Jen groaned. Her mother’s whims were one thing, but the whims of Paul bloody Song, feng shui expert and Harriet’s latest guru, were quite another. Jen knew she should be more charitable, but anyone who walked around in long, flowing trousers talking about crystals and meditation just shouldn’t be taken seriously in her book. Her mother had only known him for a few weeks and already she was dropping him into conversation like she’d known him all her life.
    “You’re choosing crystals with him now. How romantic,” Jen said sarcastically. The tone wasn’t lost on Harriet.
    “I know you’re at an age when everything seems to be about sex, darling, but some of us have moved beyond the physical to the spiritual,” she said crossly. “I don’t know why you don’t like Paul, but I think it reflects badly on you. He’s a wonderful support, really. And he understands me in a way that no one else does . . .”
    “You mean he lets you talk for longer than anyone else will put up with,” Jen said amiably. “Look, I’m sure your Sacred Feminine idea is a really great one, but I’m kind of tied up with this little MBA thing I’ve got going on. So you might have to leave me out, I’m afraid.”
    “Fine,” Harriet said dismissively. “Oh, and did I mention that I’ve booked a table for the Tsunami appeal charity dinner? You are going to come, aren’t you?”
    “No, you didn’t mention it,” Jen said firmly. She’d been to charity dinners before and had no intention of going to another. They were full of people who thought that paying eighty pounds for a ticket made them the world’s expert on the charity concerned, and anyway, there was never anyone there under the age of fifty.
    “I’m sure I did, darling. It’s on Friday. The tickets were very expensive.”
    “Well, you should have mentioned it, then. I’m going out on Friday, with Angel . . .”
    And I think I’m a little bit old to be spending my Friday night out with my mother,
she wanted to add, but thought better of it.
    Harriet sighed dramatically. “I thought this was important to you, Jennifer. Honestly, I get you a ticket to a Tsunami dinner, knowing that Bell Consulting has a table, and you can’t be bothered to—”
    “Dad’s going to be there?” Jen interrupted, her tone suddenly more serious.
    “Not your father, no. I can’t see him deigning to attend something that’s for a good cause. But some of his consultants are going. I know the organizers, you see. And they kindly gave me a little peek at the guest list. But if your social life takes precedence, then I completely understand.”
    “I think I’m going to be seeing enough of Bell this week, don’t you?” Jen said hesitantly. She could already hear a little voice in her head telling her that maybe she shouldn’t rule it out altogether.
    “And I thought you actually cared about those poor people who’s lives have been destroyed,” Harriet said, her voice catching slightly. “Do you not think that a dinner, with free-flowing wine and champagne, might not be a good opportunity to catch people off guard? To listen to conversations that they may not have walking down a corridor?”
    Jen sighed. How did her mother do