A year ago the venue would have been chosen for its capacity to impress.

This one had been chosen because the food was good and the room was warm, and those were different instincts entirely.

We were a smaller group now — eleven instead of the old sprawling fifteen, because not everyone had followed the family into its quieter phase, and the ones who had drifted away were, I had noticed, precisely the ones who had most enjoyed the old arrangement.

The absences were not mourned.