‘Wha-a?’ Bertie peered blearily into my face. He smacked his red-veined old chops and smiled. Tried to focus. ‘Always fancied your wife, Henry.’

‘Daughter,’ Dad told him. ‘But compliment accepted. Ron’s outside, apparently.’

‘Ah, Ron. Mustn’t keep him.’ Bertie struggled obediently to his feet, yawning and beaming at me as if he couldn’t quite place me. Nancy reappeared.

‘Your mother’s asleep,’ she told me. ‘And I can’t find Hetty but – oh there you are, dear.’ She beamed at her friend, who I’d deposited temporarily in an armchair by the fire. ‘You look cosy. Where are your specs?’

‘I think I might have them,’ Dad said abruptly. He took a smallish, winged pair off his face. ‘Where are mine?’ He gazed around, peeved. ‘Hope bloody Joan hasn’t got them.’

‘Christ – Joan and Roger, where are they?’ I glanced around. Dear God, not more bodies unaccounted for.

‘Went early,’ Nancy told me. ‘Joan still drives, but she likes to go in the light.’ She smirked. ‘She doesn’t drink, of course. Frightfully dull.’

I liked the sound of Joan. I eyed Nancy beadily. She’d found a cigarette to light and was puffing away. ‘Does Dan know you’re here?’ I asked. She froze, mid-exhale.

‘No!’ she breathed in a stream of smoke. ‘Don’t tell him.’

‘We decided Nance needed cheering up,’ my father told me. ‘She’s had a terrible time.’

‘Terrible,’ Bertie echoed.

‘So we sprang her,’ my father told me, trying to look important, but only succeeding in looking naughty.

‘We tried to get her a You-ber,’ Bertie informed me, ‘but they said it was too far, so we got her a taxi from the station. Joan didn’t approve, of course. Dismal old bag. Oh, there are your glasses, Henry.’

He bent slowly and picked up a pair of broken spectacles from the carpet: gave them to my father.

As the two of them examined the mangled spectacles, I beetled outside and through the gates to wake Ron. He struggled to attention immediately, ramming his cap on and starting the car, as keen as I was for him to get on the road. Under my instruction he drove right to the front door. Then we went inside and, between us, escorted Hetty and Bertie out of the house, and into the back of the car. Bertie protested loudly that he was quite capable of walking to the car on his own and shook us off, then headed straight into a rose bush. Once we’d sorted him out and picked the thorns and leaves off him, we poured him into the back seat with his wife. I saw the car safely round the corner, feeling slightly guilty about Ron coping on his own at the other end, but then I remembered the Millers were loaded, and had a live-in housekeeper. I hastened back inside. My phone stopped me, just short of the sitting room. It was Dan.