In case you think I was a pathetic specimen unable to attract a man, let me tell you that I was unofficially engaged to an absolutely dreamy chap called Darcy O’Mara. What’s more, he was the son of an Irish peer—which should make him eminently suitable for the daughter of a duke like me, except that he was as broke as I was, lived by his wits and made money in dubious ways. So there was no wedding in my foreseeable future, unless Darcy struck it rich somehow. When I last heard from him, he was in Argentina, involved in some kind of secret undertaking—probably an arms deal.

“Come on, darling. Let’s go and find a taxicab. I’ve got absolutely masses to do if I’m to get out of here tomorrow.” Mummy yanked at me again as I tried to put on my coat.

“I thought you weren’t going to bother with London shops, and were going to stop in Paris,” I said.

“One does need some basics,” she said. “Good woolen underwear, for example. We might go skiing in the Alps. And Harrods can come up with something tolerable occasionally. Is it too late for cashmere in Lugano, do you think?”

Without waiting for an answer, she dashed into the street and started looking for a cab. I was about to follow her out of the front door when the lugubrious figure of Mrs. Tombs appeared from the kitchen area. “Done with your breakfast then, are you?” she asked in that voice that always implied that life was an unbearable burden.

“Yes thank you, Mrs. Tombs.”

“Going out then, are you?”

She did have a talent for stating the obvious. I was on the front step, with my coat on. “Yes, Mrs. Tombs. My mother needs to do some shopping.”

“Always shopping, she is. Don’t she have enough clothes by now? She’s already got both wardrobes full upstairs.”

Privately, I felt that my mother would never have enough clothes. Shopping was a major sport for her, but I wouldn’t dream of being disloyal in front of a domestic. “I don’t think that Miss Daniels’s shopping habits are anything to do with us,” I said, referring to my mother by her stage name, which she preferred to use over her current legal one. She was still officially married to an American oil tycoon called Homer Clegg, who had so far refused to grant her a divorce, owing to a Puritanical religious streak my mother hadn’t known about when she married him.

“So do you reckon you’ll be back for your dinner?”

I sighed. She was becoming more annoying by the minute. “Mrs. Tombs, remember I reminded you that the midday meal is called lunch among our type of person, and dinner is served at eight o’clock in the evening.”

She sniffed, wiping her hands on her pinny. “Well pardon me for breathin’. Yer lunch, then. Are you going to want lunch?”

“Who can tell?” I said. “Have something ready anyway. Maybe something light like a salad?”