I forced a grin back. Dumping my bag, I went out to the hall and popped my head into the dining room before I went upstairs. The white linen tablecloth, soaked with red wine, had been propped up like a tent with two glasses underneath to stop it wetting the table. It was always my father’s Heath Robinson solution to a spillage, although in practice it solved nothing. In the old days my mother would summon the French polisher the following day, but these days, they lived with the stains. A bowl of trifle seemed to have fallen off the table and Hector was busy licking it. I took it from him before he took the pattern off the bowl, simultaneously spotting – oh God, Mum’s teeth. He’d licked those pristine clean too. I thought better of putting them on the table, realizing my mother could easily pick them up and pop them in her mouth, as had been witnessed one Christmas, and instead, put them in my pocket. Back in the hall I took the stairs two at a time and flew down the corridor to my parents’ room.

My mother was flat on her back on the bed, fast asleep, snoring quietly. Her lipstick was smudged, hair in disarray, and she had eye make-up all down one cheek. Other than that, she looked fine, however. She even had a slight smile on her face as she slumbered. She also appeared to be clutching a blue silk skirt. No Hetty. I popped into all the other bedrooms, came back and gently shook Mum awake.

‘Mum. Mum?’

She came round, blearily. ‘Darling,’ she murmured. ‘Such fun.’

‘Mum, where’s Hetty?’

‘Downstairs. Had a bit of an accident. Came up to get her a skirt.’ She passed it to me, together with some clean knickers. Then her eyes shut and she went back to sleep again.

Oh right. That sort of accident. I took the skirt and knickers and raced downstairs. No doubt my mother, on her helpful mission, and on the point of going back down, had been unable to resist the lure of the bed. There was no sign of Hetty in the drawing room which my parents never used these days, or in the kitchen, and I was beginning to get a bit panicky. But as I pushed open the door to the laundry room, there she was, naked from the waist down.

‘Hetty!’ I gasped. She turned: smiled. I grabbed a towel from the laundry basket and thrust it at her, but she only looked down at it in her hands in surprise. I instantly wrapped it around her waist, tucking it in firmly.