‘Drink as much as you can of this,’ Stephen told her. ‘We’re not likely to see much more of it. The Bursar sold almost the last few cases to pay for some dreary new flooring in the Library. Terrible fuss about it in College Meeting.’

At the end of the main course, long after the last undergraduate had left the Hall, the Master collected the table with a practised eye. Everyone stood up. How odd that there was no pudding, Chloe thought.

Two by two they filed out of the Hall and up a shallow spiral staircase.

‘What now?’ Chloe whispered to Stephen.

‘Wait and see,’ he told her.

The Master stopped at a low wooden door under a pointed Gothic arch. Outside the door was a row of hooks, and the fellows took off their gowns and hung them up. Then the Master stood aside from the door.

‘He has been presiding up to now, of course,’ Stephen told Chloe. ‘But this is the Senior Common Room, to which the Master doesn’t belong. So the senior fellow present takes over, which happens to be boring old Puffett this evening. Don’t worry, I’ll see you don’t get stuck with him.’

‘Won’t you come in, Master?’ asked old Puffett.

‘Thank you, Senior Tutor.’

Together they went in through the low door.

Chloe, following on in her turn, gasped faintly when she saw the room. The focus of it was a stone fireplace with a new fire crackling in it. Over the fire hung the portrait of the College’s Royal founder that Chloe had often admired, in an inferior later version, in the National Gallery. The room was lit by the blaze of candles in three silver-gilt candelabra and beyond the rich glow the corners were shadowy with carved oak panelling and velvet curtains.

In front of the fireplace was a horseshoe of table, its arms towards the fire. And the table shone and sparkled with more glasses, crystal and silverware. But this time there was no china. Chloe saw incredulously the dull gleam of gold plate. Between heaped bowls of fruit, nuts and petits fours stood fat crystal decanters of plummy port.

‘According to the rules,’ Stephen murmured, ‘I can’t sit with you up here. I have to let you go now, so that my colleagues can enjoy your company too. Who would you like to be put next to?’

Chloe glanced round wildly. ‘You know them. You choose for me.’

When she was escorted to her place at the opulent horseshoe, she found herself between an urbane economist with a practised smile and a young man with a shock of blond hair and a worn black leather jacket.

‘This is Dave Walker,’ Stephen told her. ‘Our token Red.’