Later after she has spoken to Chef – he is preparing Charenton melon, a salad of crayfish, noisettes of Provençal lamb, followed by a sorbet or clafoutis – and she is reassured that everything is on schedule, she walks out to the garden. Out to sea, Niobe is anchored now. She is a wonderful boat, white-hulled, and a hundred and five feet long, three-masted with two immense Rolls-Royce engines fitted in 1929. Harry has sent for binoculars and is examining her. Estelle hasn’t told him that Julian has a Russian buyer for the boat. This may be its last outing. She was commissioned by the second Baronet, Sir Isaiah Tubal, in 1899. Julian wants to make sure that the boatyard has done the work as ordered. The agreed price is $8m., down from $10m. She discovered this from Bryce, the skipper. She tells Harry that Julian is on his way from the airport and that lunch will be ready at one o’clock. Harry has always liked lunch at one, precisely, served in the summer dining room, which was originally the orangerie. Once it was full of grapefruit, satsumas, navel oranges, La Valette limes, mandarins and clementines, but now a few glossy lemon trees in elaborate pots do little more than nod to the past. It’s a lovely room, which looks down over three terraces to the sea. She tells the day nurse to take Sir Harry to his room for a short nap, and reminds her to make sure that he is dry before he comes to lunch.

The chauffeur phones to say they are a few minutes away and she goes to the flagged hallway at the front of the villa, and stands in the little loggia after telling security to open the front gates. The car arrives, scrunching the freshly raked gravel.

Julian is wearing jeans and a linen jacket. In his hand he has a gift for her. It’s wrapped with that incredible care – almost art – with that skill the Continentals bring to small everyday tasks. He’s a very good-looking boy, but not by his mere presence as assertive as Harry. He kisses her on both cheeks.

‘Estelle, wonderful, wonderful to see you. How’s Dad?’

‘He’s happy, I think, although his speech is still not good.’

‘But you understand him?’

His boyish, although drained, face is cocked slightly, as if eagerly awaiting good news.

‘I like to think so. How are the children and Mrs Trevelyan-Tubal?’

‘The kids are fine. But for some reason I worry about them all the time. Anyway, Kim is fine too. She’s got a new project.’

Estelle doesn’t ask what this is because he makes it sound like a stay of execution. A lot of busy men want their wives to keep themselves amused, she’s observed. It’s as if wives are by their very nature inclined to be a negative force, a dead weight.