There is a strange feeling, at my age, in being suddenly seen by people who have spent years looking straight through you, and I would be lying if I said no part of me registered it.

For six years these were the faces that had glanced past me at parties, that had not troubled to learn my name, that had accepted without a flicker of curiosity Stephanie’s framing of me as some dim, tolerated relative kept around out of charity.

I had become invisible to them so wholly that my invisibility had stopped even stinging; you cannot be wounded forever by people whose regard you have written off.

And now, in the space of one sentence from Eric, I had become the most important person in the garden — the owner of the ground they stood on, the holder of the deed, the woman who had, it was dawning on all of them, quietly held the whole glittering edifice in the palm of her hand the entire time they had been steering her away from the good seats.