Laura was overcome with a desire to rush out of that beautiful room and jump in the mud and then come back in and roll on the rug. Fortunately before the urge overwhelmed her completely, the ‘Minute Waltz’ tinkled out of someone’s handbag, growing louder as the owner of the phone hunted around. While Fionnuala apologised and moved away from the group, Laura decided if she went to the loo, they’d have forgotten all about her by the time she came back.

She was directed to a downstairs cloakroom of such grandeur it made her wonder what the family bathroom or Jocasta’s en suite would be like. She confirmed there were children in the house because there were gold imprints of two little sets of hands and feet, mounted and framed, decorating the walls.

As she washed her hands in the glass basin, inevitably splashing the glass tiles, she speculated that no non-organic product would ever pass Jocasta’s children’s lips and that Jocasta’s bedside table would perfectly reflect those one read about in feminist literary magazines. There the celebrities only seemed to have fresh flowers, incense and a couple of literary novels, one of them in French, by their beds. Not for them the radio, the clock, the pile of half-read tomes, the face cream and the dusty bottle of water.

She patted her hands dry on the back of the towel, so as not to mar the perfection of the room, which in real terms was a downstairs loo, but in Jocasta’s was another opportunity to reveal her perfect taste. Laura was ashamed to realise that had Jocasta raved about Dermot’s work with a proper amount of passion, she wouldn’t have been having these bitchy thoughts, she’d have been admiring her taste and her perfect minimalist style.

She went back into the room, hoping that Jocasta had forgotten about giving her time to ask questions about a book she knew almost by heart. Perhaps by now they’d be talking about childcare, builders and bonuses. Laura knew nothing about any of these subjects, but she didn’t care about them either so she didn’t need to be anxious. But they were still on the book and Shona was getting the third degree.

‘What do you mean you don’t understand why the father was so angry?’ one of the women was demanding. ‘It’s an Oedipal thing. Oedipus made love to his mother and murdered his father! It’s blindingly obvious!’

‘You spotted that too?’ Jocasta seemed delighted to find a fellow intellectual. ‘I thought I was the only one. The author was drawing an exact parallel to the Oedipus myth!’

‘But that’s disgusting!’ said Shona. ‘I don’t want to read books with things like that in them!’