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kidnapping, anything. Got a dog and put a dress on it, if all
else had failed.
    They’d decided very swiftly, though, that while one might be bad, three would have been way too much of a good thing. Two, in this instance, was the magic number.
    Amelia totally understood the void that Emily’s departure would have left. They had talked about it often in the weeks that had led up to her going. Amelia had been through it herself, of course, although after drama school Jessie had moved
back home without a second thought and happily fallen back into the role of dependent daughter, allowing her mother to cook for her and do her washing. Even though Jen had always thought they should throw her back out, make her understand what it was like to have to fend for herself, she was
now secretly harbouring hopes that in three years’ time Emily might do the same.
    ‘Pretty awful. Although I’m not sure it’s quite sunk in yet. I keep waiting for her to walk through the front door.’
    ‘You’ll get used to it. And these days they seem to keep in touch much more regularly than they used to. Mobile phones, I suppose.’
    ‘She’s called me every day,’ Jen said, and made an apologetic face as if to say, ‘I really don’t have anything to complain about.’
    ‘Well, there you go. Although don’t expect that to last. Once she settles in, gets into the swing of it –’
    ‘I know. Then it’ll be me phoning her.’
    Amelia leaned over and gave her a hug. ‘Like I said, you’ll get used to it.’
    ‘Jason is pretending he’s fine about it, but I know he’s checking her Facebook status every thirty seconds.’
    Amelia smiled. ‘I remember Charles kept making excuses to visit his Highgate branch when Poppy first went to St Martins, and she was living in Hackney. And then he’d say, “Well, as I was over that side of town anyway, I thought
I might as well keep going and visit her.” In the end, she had to ask him to call first because he was cramping her style.’
    ‘Are you talking about me?’ Charles appeared at the door, fresh drinks in hand. Whoever hadn’t volunteered for driving duty was always half-cut by the time lunchtime was over.
    Charles looked, as he always looked, ready for his close-up. Jen had never seen him anything other than tanned, shaved and smelling of Molton Brown shower gel and Geo. F. Trumper cologne. (She had no idea how he kept up the tan in rainy London.
Regular sprays in a St Tropez booth, maybe. She found it hard to imagine him in the regulation paper thong, lifting one leg and then the other while a barely-out-of-her-teens girl squirted brown liquid over his inner thighs). Even when she and Jason had stayed at the house, or they had all
gone away for a weekend together, it had been the same. Any time of the day or night. He was like one of those women who are so afraid of their partners seeing them without make-up that they sleep in their full slap, lying motionless on their backs all night in the hope of not smudging their
mascara, and then set the alarm for half an hour before their husband gets up so they can cleanse and reapply the whole lot while he’s still snoring.
    Jen had always admired the fact that Charles made such an effort, even if he sometimes did get it a bit wrong: his hair a touch too big, his tan a shade too orange, his heels verging a little too close to
Cuban. It was sweet. Endearing. Lovable.
    ‘Now, why would you think that?’ Amelia said.
    ‘Lucky guess,’ he said, and planted a kiss on the top of each of their heads as he handed them new glasses and took the empty ones to the sink to rinse out.
    ‘You should be so lucky,’ Amelia said, twinkling at Jen as she teased him. ‘Charles always thinks everyone’s talking about him. Not because he’s paranoid, but because he thinks he’s the most interesting topic
there is, isn’t that right, dear?’
    Charles looked mock horrified. ‘See what I have to put up with, Jen? My own wife –’
    ‘Oh, get out the