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Caroline so she wouldn’t see the tears beginning to rise in her eyes, ordered her off the premises quick smart.
    Caroline took her bag from the hall cupboard, checked she had her car keys and her credit cards, and left by the back door to get her car out of the garage.
Driving to Culworth was the easy bit, parking when she got there was a whole different ball game. A huge new car park had been provided by the council a matter of only a year ago, but already it wasn’t big enough to cope. Eventually she found a space in the station car park.
    Culworth wasn’t exactly a metropolis as far as fashion shopping was concerned, but there were a couple of dress shops still calling themselves ‘boutiques’ which she favoured, one in the market square and the other in Abbey Close.
    Coming to the market square she tried that boutique first. Madame Marie-Claire could find nothing to suit her. Caroline left amidst a hail of apologies.
    The other boutique, named ‘Veronique’, at least gave Caroline a choice. In the curtained cubicle with its gilt chair and wall-to-wall mirrors Caroline tried six dresses. One was red and close fitting and up-to-the-minute and outrageous. She remembered another red dress, not hers but someone else’s, worn in defiance at a dinner party at Harriet’s many moons ago, when she, Caroline, sick with longing to have Peter’s children had offered him a divorce when they got home. The black? Too severe. The green? Bilious. The blue? Too safe. The other black? Too matronly. Silvery grey? Didn’t suit her mood.
    ‘Look, Veronica, I like this red the best, but I’ve got to have time to think about it. I shall be back, because I must have something new to wear, but it is a bit daring, isn’t it, for me?’
    ‘Maybe it’s right for your mood, though. Whatever you’ve purchased here in the past has been elegant but cautious. But this … this says something, doesn’t it?’ She held the slim red dress up in front of her and swirled it around and made it look as though it was doing a tango all by itself.
‘It does. And that’s the trouble. Dare I?’
    ‘The colour is very flattering, your dark hair and eyes, you know. If you were fair like your daughter then I would say no because it would obliterate you. But this … oh la la!’
    Caroline loved it. ‘I’ll go have lunch and then I’ll come back. Is that all right? Do you mind, keeping it on one side for me?’
    ‘Not at all, for a valued customer like you, Dr Harris, anything is possible.’
    ‘I’ll pop into the Belfry for lunch and have a think.’
    At twelve-thirty the Belfry Restaurant was rapidly filling up. A waitress signalled an empty table in the corner by the window. She wended her way between the tables, took off her jacket, hung it on the back of her chair and sat down facing the crowded room. She remembered sitting here at this very table when she’d tried to tell Peter she had cancer and realised she couldn’t find the words. The menu didn’t seem to have changed much. A shadow fell across it and she looked up ready to apologise to the waitress because she hadn’t yet made up her mind. But it wasn’t the waitress, it was Hugo Maude.
    ‘It is Caroline, isn’t it? What an amazing coincidence. I decided to come out this morning to get out of Jimbo and Harriet’s hair for a while and they suggested here for a quiet lunch. They didn’t say I should find you lunching here. May I?’ He put his hand on the back of the other chair and raised his eyebrows at her.
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Do you often eat lunch alone?’
    ‘I can’t remember the last time I had lunch alone in Culworth. I came in to …’
‘Yes?’
    ‘Have a change of scene.’
    Hugo put his head to one side and studied her. ‘And why not? Have you ordered?’
    ‘No, not yet.’
    ‘I’m having the lamb cutlets. I perused the menu in the window before I decided to come in.’
    ‘I will too, then. Are you enjoying your convalescing?’
    Hugo’s face became