‘Because, aside from the Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em Christmas special and your work party, which wasn’t for the rest of us, we don’t have anything planned. And I can’t see the harm in it.’ My mother was standing over his left shoulder. ‘I was going to go the shops this morning to buy a turkey and a pudding. And four bon bons, if they do them in fours. For some of us, England’s no bigger than this house, plus a few chats with George Lascelles and his gardener, and it’d be nice not to narrow it any further by declining a perfectly reasonable invitation.’

‘Righto.’ He set the invitation down. ‘I bet he does it right too, George. Classic bloody British Christmas. I bet he does bread sauce. Lunchtime too, so we’ll still be able to watch Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em in the evening. And bon bons are just Christmas crackers here. We’ve got to remember that. I said bon bons last night and they thought I’d broken out in French.’

‘We’ll need to take something,’ my mother said. She sat down at the end of the table and looked at me. ‘Can you think of anything he needs?’

‘No, I . . .’ I tried to imagine something, anything, that was missing from George’s house. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re right though, Margot,’ my father said. ‘We’ve got to take something. Just to show we appreciate the hospitality. Biscuits’d be a bit . . . nah. Even one of those Christmas tins. He’s a bit classier than that, wouldn’t you reckon?’ He tapped the invitation with his finger. ‘Port. A bottle of a good Australian port. Not your everyday stuff.’

‘And some after-dinner mints?’ I said. People had sometimes brought those to dinners at our house in Brisbane.

‘Yes.’ My father clicked his fingers, then pointed at me. ‘Yes, good idea. A bottle of the best Australian port available at any off-licence in Teddington and a box of after-dinner mints. You can’t go wrong with after-dinner mints. They’ve got to have them here, surely. They sound like the kind of thing Jeeves would bring in with a snifter of port. Simon, you and I had better sort that out this morning before everywhere shuts up shop.’

‘And we have to reply to the invitation too,’ my mother said.

‘Oh, yeah.’ He picked it up in both hands. ‘Yeah, right. Written invitation, written response – that’d be the etiquette here, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ my mother said. ‘And in third person. If it comes in third person, you reply in third person.’

‘Brilliant, Margot.’ His hair flopped in front of his face and he pushed it back into place. ‘How did you know that?’