‘Anyway,’ she moved on, ‘I agreed to see you because Alexandra wanted me to. Now we’ve met – what?’ She answered her own question before I had the chance. ‘You’re going to tell me that this place is a fire hazard – right?’

‘Probably.’

‘And I’m going to say, “Thank you very much for your opinion, Ellen Curtis, but I have no intention of making any changes.” The fact is that, in spite of my daughter’s solicitude and conviction that I’m losing my marbles, I’m extremely careful about my personal safety. My experience of war zones has taught me how to avoid avoidable risks. There are no doubt people out there who’d like to kill me – I’ve rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way in the course of my career – but there’s no way I’ll die by accident.

‘And if Alexandra has told you that I fall into bed every night, smashed out of my skull, she is wrong. I remain in control and sleep well. One thing my life has trained me for is the ability to sleep anywhere and to sleep instantly. I’ve never had any need of sleeping pills.

‘The trouble is that Alexandra doesn’t realize how inured I have become to the effects of alcohol. It doesn’t affect my faculties and I don’t get hangovers. Drinking late into the night – vodka in Chechnya, arak in Syria, whiskey more or less anywhere – has been part of my professional way of life. I’ve elicited more useful information over booze than I ever would have done over cups of tea – and still been able to file perfect copy in the morning. So, Alexandra doesn’t need to worry on that score.’

She gestured around the paper-filled room. ‘This is how I live. This is how I want to live. And it suits me.’

She looked at me defiantly, expecting counter-arguments, but I produced none. She grinned.

‘Right, Ellen. So, our business is concluded. Were you the kind of person I thought you’d be when Alexandra said she’d arranged for you to visit, I would now be saying, “Piss off out of here!”’

‘Right,’ I said, reaching for my handbag.

She raised her hand to stop me. ‘Since, however, you turn out to be intelligent and congenial, I’m very happy to continue sitting here drinking with you until you need to get back home … wherever your home may be.’

‘Chichester.’

‘Right.’ She looked at me, almost appealing, vulnerable for the first time in our encounter. ‘So …?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘since you have just filled my glass to the brim with Jameson’s, I think it would be a waste for me to leave the rest of it and go straight away.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Ingrid with a crooked smile. ‘I will happily finish up your leftovers.’

‘Very generous of you, but I think I’d rather finish them up myself.’

‘Excellent.’ The crooked grin turned into a broad smile. ‘So, tell me how you got into the decluttering? Bit of a niche business, isn’t it?’