Jo thought of saying she didn’t know what Sophie meant, but that would be silly. ‘Liam’s going to be working for us, so that makes the question of whether he’s sexy irrelevant.’

‘Lady Chatterley didn’t think so,’ prompted Meredith naughtily.

‘Meredith!’ Jo protested, then remembered that when they were all asked by their English teacher to name their favourite fictional character among all the Elizabeth Bennets, Dorothea Brookes and Jane Eyres, Meredith had said Constance Chatterley and there had been a stunned silence. Meredith had not been asked, as the others were, to explain why!

‘You haven’t changed one bit,’ accused Jo, laughing. ‘You pretend to be this hard-headed businesswoman but underneath it all you’re still this feminist rebel!’

‘Why do you think I didn’t get married?’ Meredith smiled back. ‘No compromise! Smash the patriarchy!’

‘Poor Philippe,’ Sophie murmured to Jo. ‘He’s got a challenge in Meredith all right.’

After that, the whirlwind of planning the move took them all over, with another visit to the château, this time with paint charts and measuring tapes in hand, all of them caught up in the excitement that moving always entails. Fortunately, a load of their stuff had arrived courtesy of Liz, and both Jo and Sophie finally had something new to wear.

‘Which room are you having?’ Sophie asked her mum as they looked round the spacious apartment at the top of the château, which had been the duke and duchess’s residence.

Meredith – without consulting the others, naturally – had opted for their old bedroom with its massive canopied four-poster which looked as if it had last been slept in by Louis XIV, plus its canopied bathroom overlooking the river.

Sophie was delighted with a much smaller room that had a similarly lovely view but would give her some scope to imprint her own personality. Glancing round, she felt that sudden spurt of excitement creating an interior can give you: an empty palette for something beautiful to emerge.

Joanna had chosen one of the four towers. It meant the bedroom was smaller and a hard-to-furnish octagonal shape, but it made her feel like a princess in a fairy tale. ‘But don’t wait for a prince to come and rescue you,’ Jo told herself firmly. ‘This princess will find her own destiny!’

At least, she certainly hoped so.

Over the next few days Steph took great pleasure in introducing Sophie to her favourite brocante, where she found a perfect desk to adorn her new room plus a few modern touches to mix in with the antiques to create a more contemporary style.

‘Sophie, you are clever,’ her mother declared when she’d installed her new purchases. ‘It suddenly looks like something from Interiors!’