‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Jocasta, who’d come back into the room with a tray of herbal teas and a cafetiere of coffee for those rash enough to ingest caffeine so near to bedtime. ‘If I start a book I have to finish it. I feel it’s my duty.’

‘Me, I’m with Laura,’ said Shona, happy to be able to associate herself with the one who knew Dermot Flynn personally. ‘If I don’t like a book I just read another one.’

No one else confessed to sharing this cavalier attitude to books and the subject moved on.

‘So,’ said Jocasta a bit later, ‘do you think you could get Dermot to come and talk to us, as a group?’

‘No,’ Laura said bluntly. ‘I’m not in touch with him any more and even if I were, that is the last thing I’d ask him to do.’

‘But you could get in touch with him, via his publisher,’ Jocasta persisted. ‘And if you got him to go to England, you could surely get him to come a few miles up here.’

‘No! He’d hate it!’

‘How do you know? How well do you know him?’

She didn’t really know he’d hate it. He might absolutely love being idolised by all these yummy mummies, but however much he’d love it, she wasn’t going to track him down and invite him. ‘Not all that well.’

‘So! And he can’t be that precious if you got him to attend a literary festival in England!’

There was just a hint in Jocasta’s voice implying that if Laura, not a formidable opponent, had got Dermot to attend the festival, Dermot must be the sort of genial guy who’d go to a book-group meeting for the promise of a glass of wine and an organic canapé.

Laura was fairly used to this reaction by now. ‘He had his own reasons for attending the festival. I can’t tell you what they are’ – well, she could have done but she wasn’t going to – ‘he’s a law unto himself.’

‘Still,’ said Shona. ‘You must be proud of yourself for doing that. It’s still a great feather in your cap. And knowing him personally – it’ll make you a great dinner-party favourite in these parts.’

Although it was sweet of Shona to credit her so, the thought of being a dinner-party favourite made her shiver. She got up. ‘I think I’d better be going. No, you don’t need to come with me, Shona, I know my way home and it’s not dark or anything.’