‘Willo my fucking ex!’ When upset, Louise sounds like posh Yoda. What is a farkingeggs, anyway? Perhaps it’s a mystery word, like “quadrangle” or “martingale”—maybe a special piece of cutlery used to eat sorbet between courses? Oh. Oh, no. Poor Louise.

‘It’s OK! Do not worry. Is he here yet? I have many, many edible things. And enough prosecco to fill an aquarium. It’s going to be fine.’

Louise looks a little more cheerful, which is gratifying, if scary. Don’t take my word for it, on the ‘fineness’ front! I’m hardly a credible source! But she gathers my many bags and tells me to ‘go on through to the drawing room’.

I hear three women laughing almost harmonically. The laughter stops abruptly as the door swings open. They stare. They do not smile, or say anything that sounds like a greeting, or make the sort of gestures that would suggest they are finding space for me on the sofa.

‘Is this your new housekeeper, Louise?’ says a fourth person, a man in white chinos, wearing a navy blazer with brass buttons. I do a double take—yes, I imagined the captain’s hat.

It’s a shame that these women are looking at me as though I just crawled up from a hole in the skirting board, because I’m longing to ask them about their tans. Over the years, I have experimented with fake tan in all of its forms. I have buffed and shaved and exfoliated and moisturised and not moisturised and patted and dabbed and blotted and waited. And every single time, the same predictable thing has happened. No, that’s not true. There was one occasion when I didn’t go orange. I turned green.

These women have bathed in butterscotch. Every inch of exposed skin—and I can see two pairs of knickers—looks lickable, even and gleaming. How do they do it? Is there a descendent of Leonardo da Vinci working at a local salon? Maybe the sun in Barbados is somehow superior to the regular old sun that shines in the park.

Louise announces me. ‘Everyone, this is Imogen, I work with her at The Know. Imogen, this is everyone: Buffy, Amelia, Muffy and Plum.’

Well, that’s no help whatsoever. Louise gestures to the hatless man. ‘Plum is short for Ronald, but we don’t bother with that. I’d better get back to my millefeuille.’ No! Don’t leave me! I feel as though I’m being abandoned at the school gates. I’d quite like to burst into tears, throw myself on the floor and hold onto her ankles.