Inside, most of the guests were gathered in the studio, where Picton was on a small stage near the control-booth window, tinging a spoon on a champagne glass. The thirty or forty guests crowded into the rehearsal room settled down to a murmur but still there was a lot of noise from the other rooms in the house.

Picton tapped the microphone and yelled into it with an air of joviality that didn’t do enough to hide his aggression. ‘Oi. Oi! Keep it down.’ He was answered by laughter from another room. ‘Shut it!’ He spotted one of the catering crew at the studio door. ‘Get that bloody music off, would you.’

Tapping the mic again, enjoying the rich sounds he was making, he put on a drunk-karaoke baritone, pressing his lips to the mesh. ‘It’s time to hear from the man himself. Our good friend, without whom none of us would be here…’

‘Clearly,’ Suki murmured.

Now Petra turned to shoulder her way to the door. Suki sent a where-are-you-going? frown after her and Petra replied by holding up a just-a-moment finger.

‘The one, the only, birthday boy, twenty-one again, let’s give it up for Curtis Worthing!’ Gripping his emptied glass and a knife, he tried to clap into the mic as Curtis Worthing stepped up onto the dais. Petra glanced around the room and noticed James Worthing standing by himself in the furthest corner of the studio, near the window she’d climbed through the other day. He was wearing jeans and a stylish casual jacket over a T-shirt, a small circle of space carved out around him. When he noticed Petra looking at him, he raised his beer bottle towards her with a smile.