And then it listed, by name:
Solange — dessert and cream.
Nessa — two salads and bread.
Roisin — drinks and ice.
Us — all the meat, the barbecue, the gas, the plates, the setting up and the clearing.
That is not an unreasonable email. I read it back four times before I sent it and I have read it about two hundred times since, and it is polite and it is warm and it is signed off with three kisses.
None of them replied.
Not one. Not a no, not a can’t-do-Saturday, not a thumbs up.
I know all three of them opened it, because I am not too proud to say I had a read receipt on it, and all three came back within twenty-four hours.
And on the twelfth of June, Solange rang me.
She was on for eleven minutes. She talked about Nessa’s kitchen extension and about a woman at the church who’d had a fall.
