‘You heard that?’

‘You hear everything in here. Most customers don’t stop talking when waiters are around.’ She switches on the milk-frother, adding, ‘An apron gives you superpowers. It actually makes you pretty much invisible.’

Liv had not registered Mo’s appearance at her table, she thinks uncomfortably. Mo is looking at her with a small smile, as if she can hear her thoughts. ‘It’s okay. I’m used to being the Great Unnoticed.’

‘So,’ says Liv, accepting a coffee. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘In the last nearly ten years? Um, this and that. Waitressing suits me. I don’t have the ambition for bar work.’ She says this deadpan. ‘You?’

‘Oh, just some freelance stuff. I work for myself. I don’t have the personality for office work.’ Liv smiles.

Mo takes a long drag of her cigarette. ‘I’m surprised,’ she says. ‘You were always one of the Golden Girls.’

‘Golden Girls?’

‘Oh, you and your tawny crew, all legs and hair and men around you, like satellites. Like something out of Scott Fitzgerald. I thought you’d be … I don’t know. On telly. Or in the media, or acting or something.’

If Liv had read these words on a page, she might have detected an edge to them. But there is no rancour in Mo’s voice. ‘No,’ she says, and looks at the hem of her shirt.

Liv finishes her coffee. The remaining waiter has gone. And Mo’s cup is empty. It is a quarter to twelve. ‘Do you need to lock up? Which way are you walking?’

‘Nowhere. I’m staying here.’

‘You have a flat here?’

‘No, but Dino doesn’t mind.’ Mo stubs out her cigarette, gets up and empties the ashtray. ‘Actually, Dino doesn’t know. He just thinks I’m really conscientious. The last to leave every evening. “Why can’t the others be more like you?”’ She jerks a thumb behind her. ‘I have a sleeping-bag in my locker and I set my alarm for five thirty. Little bit of a housing issue at the moment. As in, I can’t afford any.’

Liv stares.

‘Don’t look so shocked. That banquette is more comfortable than some of the rental accommodation I’ve been in, I promise you.’

Afterwards she isn’t sure what makes her say it. Liv rarely lets anyone into the house, let alone people she hasn’t seen for years. But almost before she knows what she’s doing, her mouth is opening and the words ‘You can stay at mine,’ are emerging. ‘Just for tonight,’ she adds, when she realizes what she has said. ‘But I have a spare room. With a power shower.’ Conscious that this may have sounded patronizing, she adds, ‘We can catch up. It’ll be fun.’

Mo’s face is blank. Then she grimaces, as if it is she who is doing Liv the favour. ‘If you say so,’ she says, and goes to get her coat.

She can see her house long before she gets there: its pale blue glass walls stand out above the old sugar warehouse as if something extra-terrestrial has landed on the roof. David liked this; he liked to be able to point it out if they were walking home with friends or potential clients. He liked its incongruity against the dark brown brick of the Victorian warehouses, the way it caught the light, or carried the reflection of the water below. He liked the fact that the structure had become a feature of London’s riverside landscape. It was, he said, a constant advertisement for his work.

When it was built, almost ten years ago, glass had been his construction material of choice, its components made sophisticated with thermal abilities, eco-friendliness. His work is distinctive across London; transparency is the key, he would say. Buildings should reveal their purpose, and their structure. The only rooms that are obscured are bathrooms, and even then he often had to be persuaded not to fit one-way glass. It was typical of David that he didn’t believe it was unnerving to see out when you were on the loo, even if you were assured that nobody else could see in.

Her friends had envied her this house, its location, and its occasional appearances in the better sort of interiors magazine – but she knew they added, privately, to each other, that such minimalism would have driven them mad. It was in David’s bones, the drive to purify, to clear out what was not needed. Everything in the house had to withstand his William Morris test: is it functional, and is it beautiful? And then: is it absolutely necessary? When they had first got together, she had found it exhausting. David had bitten his lip as she left trails of clothes across the bedroom floor, filled the kitchen with bunches of cheap flowers, trinkets from the market. Now, she is grateful for her home’s blankness; its spare asceticism.

‘So. Freaking. Cool.’ They emerge from the rickety lift into the Glass House, and Mo’s face is uncharacteristically animated. ‘This is your house? Seriously? How the hell did you get to live somewhere like this?’

‘My husband built it.’ She walks through the atrium, hanging her keys carefully on the single silver peg, flicking on the internal lights as she passes.

‘Your ex? Jeez. And he let you keep it?’

‘Not exactly.’ Liv presses a button and watches as the roof shutters ease back silently, exposing the kitchen to the starlit sky. ‘He died.’ She stands there, her face turned firmly upwards, bracing herself for the flurry of awkward sympathy. It never gets any easier, the explanation. Four years on, and the words still cause a reflexive twinge, as if David’s absence is a wound still located deep within her body.