‘We haven’t asked anyone else, Duncan. We wanted to have you to ourselves.’

A pointless remark, he thought, under the circumstances. Naturally, they hadn’t asked anyone else. The presence of other guests would have defeated the exercise. But perhaps it hadn’t been so pointless, after all. It could be an opening gambit.

‘Delightful,’ he said.

‘We’ve got such a lot to talk about. I thought it would be nicer this way.’

‘Much nicer.’ Such a lot to talk about? There was only one thing she could mean by that. But she needn’t think – silent Hugo sitting there with his grim moody face needn’t think – that he would help them along an inch of the way. If they were going to get on to the subject they would have to do all the spadework themselves. ‘We were just saying,’ he said, ‘how tragic all these motorway crashes are. Now I feel all this could be stopped by a very simple method.’ He outlined the simple method, but he could tell they weren’t really interested and he wasn’t surprised when Elizabeth said:

‘That’s fascinating, Duncan, but let’s talk about you. What have you been doing lately?’

Controlling the business your husband nearly ruined.

‘Oh, this and that,’ he said. ‘Nothing much.’

‘Did you go on a cruise this winter?’

‘Er – yes, yes, I did. The Caribbean, as a matter of fact.’

‘That’s nice. I’m sure the change did you good.’

Implying he needed having good done to him, of course. She had only got on to cruises so that she could point out that some people couldn’t afford them. ‘I had a real rest,’ he said heartily. ‘I must just tell you about a most amusing thing that happened to me on the way home.’ He told them, but it didn’t sound very amusing and although Elizabeth smiled half-heartedly, Hugo didn’t. ‘Well, it seemed funny at the time,’ he said.

‘We can eat in five minutes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Tell me, Duncan, did you buy that villa you were so keen on in the South of France?’

‘Oh, yes, I bought it.’ She was looking at him very curiously, very impertinently really – waiting for him to apologize for spending his own money, he supposed. ‘Listen to that rain,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t let up at all.’

They agreed that it hadn’t and silence fell. He could tell from the glance they exchanged – he was very astute in these matters – that they knew they had been baulked for the time being. And they both looked pretty fed-up, he thought triumphantly. But the woman was weighing in again, and a bit nearer the bone this time.

‘Who do you think we ran into last week, Duncan? John Churchouse.’

The man who had done that printing for Frasers a couple of years back. He had got the order, Duncan remembered, just about the time of Hugo’s promotion. He sat tight, drank the last of his sherry.

‘He told us he’d been in hospital for months and lost quite a lot of business. I felt so . . .’