"Yes, dying to," I said, although I could see Celia was riveted by Babs, with her wicked green eyes and fabulous indiscretion, and could cheerfully have stayed out here for hours. She was certainly very beautiful and in her day had constantly been snapped getting on and off planes by the local papers, national ones too: model Babs Trewellyn, back from Paris, dressed in Dior — although it never was, she told me confidentially; always a copy, they never checked. An It Girl, I suppose, of her day. The camera loved those startling high cheekbones, slanting eyes and long blonde hair, streaked with gray now, but still with a good bust and skinny figure. Not that she cared. Babs didn't seem to give two hoots what she looked like. Oh, it was fun dressing up, and there were lots of shots of her and Mum posing in their youth, drinks in hands, arms around their boyfriends, always in pursuit of fun — but she didn't work at it. It was a lark. Iris was in the pictures too sometimes, but Iris would be smiling more sardonically in the background, even then a sphinx-like creature with a grip on reality. Someone had to have one, Mum would remark; left to her and Babs it was a shrieking melee of beach parties, camp fires, dancing by moonlight and - well. Not my mother, so much. She'd got her own grip when she met Dad. But Babs had been unlucky.

"I saw Iris," I told her as we went up the garden towards the cottage. "On splendid, caustic form as usual, but she didn't come in for lunch."

“She rarely does these days, and I can't say I blame her."

"Why would she come for lunch?" Celia asked, surprised, as we ducked under the low oak beam above the front porch.

“She's Roger's sister," I said, turning to her. “Didn't I say?"

"Roger's sister." She stopped, flabbergasted. "I thought she worked in the stables!"

Babs and I laughed.

"Well, she does," I told her. "Although she doesn't get paid – or perhaps she does these days. But you're right, that's her life, always has been. She lives above them in the coach house."

"Right." Celia was trying to absorb this. “So – you, and Iris, and Flora's Mum, Maggie—"

"Were all at school together," Babs said simply. "Boarding, in Dorset, at the convent. There's nothing round here so they sent us all away. The boys too, of course. The Scarlet Virgins, they called us, bright red uniforms."

"And Belinda?"

"Oh, no." Babs took a drag of her cigarette and turned to her, eyes dancing, in the doorway. “She's frightfully common. Local comp, I expect."

"Like me," I told her cheerfully.

"Oh yes, why not? Nothing wrong with it. Just don't pretend you're Lady Muck, which you certainly don't." She turned back to the house. "Got terrible taste, hasn't she?"