Felicity found me later, by Arthur's doors, after most people had gone inside for the canapés.

She'd taken off her pink hat. She was holding it in both hands.

“Joan,” she said. Her voice was small. “I don't know what to say.”

“Then don't say anything, dear.”

“No. I need to.” She took a breath. “I took you off the committee. I took you off the flowers. I put you at the back of the church. I laughed at your twenty pounds in front of everyone. I told the newspaper I'd found the donor through my London connections.”

She looked like she might cry.

“I thought being important meant having money,” she said. “And you had more than any of us. And you never said a single word.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

“Felicity,” I said, “do you know how to make soup for forty people?”

She blinked. “No.”

“The pensioners' lunch starts again on Tuesday. In there.” I nodded at the shiny new kitchen. “We could use another pair of hands. Ten o'clock. Bring an apron.”

She stared at me.

Then, slowly, she nodded.

On Tuesday, at ten o'clock, she came. In an apron. She peeled forty potatoes very badly and burned her thumb.

She's come every Tuesday since.