And nor were they alone. Mum and Dad still entertained on a regular basis, and many of their friends were in the same state. Nancy De Courcy, Mum’s BF and a fearsome pony club mother in my youth, had passed out in her soup the other day, apparently, whereupon everyone had chortled and agreed it was lucky it was gazpacho. So what? She’d been cleaned up, laid out on a sofa like a stiff, according to my father, while the rest of the guests pushed on through. She even came round to enjoy a glass of Château d’Yquem with pudding, before being driven home together with husband Archie by a very nice chap who’d come to collect them. As I pointed out to Helena, if that was our children, we’d think they’d behaved terribly responsibly.

‘Yes, but they’re not children,’ she’d objected. Helena wanted them to act their age: to play canasta and watch My Fair Lady with other ‘moved on’ folk, and, a tiny bit of my brain wondered, let her get her hands on the house.

I went back to the sitting room and found my father settling Mum in her favourite armchair, propping her feet on a footstool, adjusting her cushions. She was reaching out for his hand in thanks, her pale blue eyes watery as she squeezed it. Daddy brushed aside her apologies for breaking his cricketing bowl, and as I swept the small pieces he’d missed, he bustled off to the drinks cupboard, muttering about getting her a little pick-me-up, and one for him too. For the nerves. I knew it was hopeless to suggest this was not the most sensible option, and even Helena only got as far as opening her mouth – and shutting it again. We sat on the sofa opposite, watching dejectedly as my old dad, tall, rake-thin, still elegant and suave at eighty-six in his whipcord trousers and starched shirt, handed my mother, equally thin, and beautifully dressed in ancient Chloé (a few stains on the skirt perhaps), with her lipstick askew and too much eye shadow, what looked like a bucket of neat gin.

‘We had a marvellous time at the races the other day with the Montagues,’ he told us, settling into his own armchair, as if absolutely nothing had happened and Helena and I had just popped down for a social. ‘Didn’t we, darling?’

‘Oh, it was splendid,’ my mother agreed. ‘Quite the highlight of my week.’

‘Your mother’s got a new suitor,’ he told us confidentially, winking roguishly. ‘A retired endocrinologist, a professor, who’s moved to the village. He took us in his Bristol. Widowed, obviously, and of a rather earnest bent, but your mother worked her magic as usual.’

Helena and I forced tight smiles as Mum chortled, cheering up enormously. She patted her hair. ‘I can’t think what your father means.’