She was right. In the days that followed, Perry and I found an easy, undemanding friendship together, and the instant liking I had felt for him when he had come weaving down the road at his lame horse’s head grew almost without my knowing. He was the easiest man or boy I had ever known. He was never sour, he was never impatient. I never saw him anything but smiling and happy.

His mother encouraged our friendship. When she wanted me to come to Havering Hall she sent Perry over to fetch me, rather than one of the footmen. When it grew late and I had to go home she would let me go on horseback if Perry was with me, she did not make me take a carriage. When she wanted to show me how to curtsey when a man bowed it was Perry who stood opposite me with his hand on his heart.

He was seldom drunk as I had seen him on that first day. He was rarely unsteady on his feet, and if he had taken too much port after we had left him for dinner he was clever at concealing the fact that the floor was wavering at every step. If his mother was in the room he would lean nonchalantly against a chair, or sit at a stool at my feet. Only if he had to rise and walk would his look of owlish concentration betray him.

I was not sure if she noticed. She was an inscrutable combination of manners and frankness. Sometimes Perry would say something which would amuse her and she would throw back her head and laugh. Other times her eyes, as blue as his but never as warm, would be veiled and she would look at us under her lashes as if she were measuring me. I did not think she missed much, and yet she seldom checked Perry, and I never heard her caution him against drinking.

But they were Quality – a Quality family as I had never seen before. They lived by different rules entirely, in a world apart. Lady Clara would laugh till she wept over her letters from London and read aloud titbits of scandal about the royal dukes and the society ladies. The Quality behaved in ways which we would never have dared, even on a showground. There was no one to gainsay them. There was no one to watch them, order them. There were no parish authorities, or justices, or vicars or beadles watching them. No wonder they were lovely and feckless and wicked. The whole world belonged to them.