‘My mother makes it as a reflex action. She has a B & B and puts it in the guest rooms. She gives any that are left over to any passing person and it’s often me. I’ll get it later.’ For now all she wanted was to sink into the extremely shabby, exquisitely comfortable armchair, sip her wine and look into the flames.

When they had both eaten quite a lot of the sourdough loaf and selection of cheeses with strange-sounding names that he produced, along with another glass of wine, Jago said, ‘So tell me.’

Helena sighed the sigh of the replete person who never stayed angry for long. ‘It’s my sister-in-law.’

‘Yes?’

‘She seems to want my mother to sell her house so she and my brother can buy a mansion with seven bedrooms and a horrid granny flat. My mother would live in the granny flat and look after their child.’ She paused. ‘Mind you, me and Mum both feel that Issi – short for Ismene, but we’re not allowed to shorten it – is a bit thin and could benefit from Mum’s cooking.’

Jago considered. ‘People who call their child Ismene could be capable of anything.’

Helena checked to see if he was teasing and while he was twinkling a bit, his look was basically sympathetic. ‘My worry is that Mum will actually do it. She says she won’t but she’s a bit soft; I can’t totally rely on her to stand firm.’

‘When you say soft, you mean stupid?’

‘No! I mean soft-hearted, too kind. I promise you, she can’t pass a homeless person without giving them money and she never comes back from London without at least ten copies of the Big Issue.’ She paused. ‘If she gets lost, which she does all the time, she asks a Big Issue seller and gives them a tenner for their trouble.’

‘Oh, that is kind-hearted.’

‘And I don’t mind that, or the fact that she cries at almost anything she sees on telly – I can’t even go with her to the cinema – but it’s the worry that when Cressida suggests she’s being selfish, keeping her big house when they could do with most of its value, guilt will make her say: “Yes, that’s true, here you go, darling.”’

‘Did your sister-in-law suggest that?’

‘No, but she will, and Mum will cave in. And she had to work so hard to keep the house after the divorce.’

Explaining what happened – her mother selling the orchard and land for a building plot, something that caused such heartache at the time when no one knew who might buy it and what kind of a property her mother might find next to hers – Helena took another glass of wine, and she knew she would probably wake with a hangover.

‘So what did happen?’ asked Jago, putting down the bottle. ‘Who bought it?’