At the top table Brian is thrusting his iPad towards Joanna and she is sliding it back to him, refusing to look. Timothy is piggy in the middle between them. It’s almost comical – except that it’s my livelihood hanging in the balance.

‘It’s the sort of cookery show I’d love to watch,’ Faith carries on. ‘And, let’s face it, I could do with the lessons.’

Faith’s domestic disabilities are diabolical. She once set her kitchen cabinets alight burning cheese on toast, then copped off with the fire engine driver who arrived swiftly on the scene. For weeks, I heckled her about sliding down his fireman’s pole.

‘I mean, just this morning, my house guest donated a little carton of eggs, with a note that said “Eat Me”. Only, I haven’t a clue how to cook eggs! What I served up for him instead is quite another story…’

Faith says this quietly, and under cover of the arguing at the front.

‘Name?’ I whisper.

This is our standard Q&A dissection of Faith’s hook-ups.

‘Toby Ellison.’

‘Occupation?’

‘He’s a colleague.’

‘Is that what you’re calling them these days?’

‘He’s visiting from our New York office. You’ll love this, Gracie. His assistant accidentally booked him to stay in a place called The Puss in Boots, which turned out to be not as “quintessentially English” as she believed. She sent him to spend the night at a massage parlour on Golden Square, with all the trimmings.’

I snicker appropriately.

‘When Toby returned to the office, amused, but not wishing to play along, I did the only charitable thing.’

‘You offered him a happy ending at your place?’

‘I offered him my spare room. And, well, one thing led to another…’

Usually, I enjoy hearing about Faith’s sexual conquests in detail. But this is neither the time nor the place.

I check the front and catch Joanna glancing our way even as she is rolling her eyes at Brian’s incessant carping. Timothy’s arm has manoeuvred its way around the back of her chair. Our silver fox.

‘Anyway, I’m like the joke, right?’ Faith continues. ‘I can’t even boil an egg.’

‘I can teach you to boil an egg, Faith.’

‘Would you, darling?’ Faith leans in closer. She smells, like her signature perfume, Carnal Flower, of lusty tuberose and creamy sweetness. ‘All I could think to do this morning was stick the Post-it onto Toby’s naked torso.’ Faith shrugs suggestively. ‘Eat me…’

‘Oh God.’

‘Mmm. I wouldn’t mind keeping this one.’

‘You’ll have new man candy to practice your egg boiling skills on by next week, Faith,’ I beg to differ.

‘You’ll teach me some culinary tricks?’

‘As Jerry Hall said, to keep a man, be a cook in the kitchen—’

‘And a whore in the bedroom.’

Faith and I giggle in whispers.