‘Oh!’ she muttered, an awkward blush colouring her cheeks, ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’ Possibly caught out by her own rudeness, and unable to think of anything else to say, she turned and stalked away.

After a little more wandering among the treasures, I began to wonder what had happened to Paul and Nick. I hoped they hadn’t forgotten me and gone home. Through the long windows of one room I could see across a courtyard to some stables, which were also stuffed with auction lots, and I strolled across. Inside, I found humbler fare: scrubbed pine, old tools and farm implements. I also found Paul and Nick, talking in a knot of people, including, I saw with some amusement, Verbena Clarke. Resolutely I made my way towards them.

‘Good heavens,’ one of them exclaimed loudly. ‘It’s the Titian-haired beauty!’

It took me a moment to recognise the man in an overcoat and trilby hat as the deliverer of Mrs Clarke’s dresser. He tipped his hat to me. ‘We met at Vee’s the other day,’ he prompted me as I joined the group, and introduced himself pleasantly as Tom Smithson.

I shook his hand. ‘I’m Juno.’ I turned to Verbena Clarke, and added, as if I’d only just noticed her, ‘Oh, hello, Vee!’

She responded with a stiff nod.

‘Juno is my assistant,’ Nick told them all. There was a touching note of pride in his voice.

I found my hand being wrung by a tall, skinny man in a cravat and sports coat, who laughed loudly, showing yellow teeth like old piano keys. ‘She’s not Titian, old boy!’ he cried, highly amused with himself. ‘She’s Pre-Raphaelite, definitely Pre-Raphaelite.’

I don’t like having my personal space invaded: Piano Teeth was leaning in much too close, lingering over his unpleasantly limp handshake, whilst his pale-blue eyes undid the buttons of my dress. It was like being clung to by a piece of damp seaweed and ogled by a cod.

Paul was quick to pick up on my unease. ‘Fancy a cup of tea, Juno?’ he asked. ‘There’s a tea room in the old dairy.’

‘Yes, you go, you two,’ Nick urged us, an obvious signal he wanted us out of the way, and we left him to his cronies.

‘So, you know Verbena?’ I couldn’t resist asking, as we strolled across to the tea room.

‘Not really,’ he answered, with what I took to be a pleasing lack of interest. ‘She turns up at sales and auctions now and again. She’s always on the lookout for bits and pieces.’

‘Being a designer, I suppose,’ I added.

He nodded. ‘I’ve restored the odd bit of furniture for her.’