Mrs Samson brought out a tray with two large teapots on it. Larry carried the sandwiches and the scones. On Alice’s right, Una sat with a box of tissues on her lap, wiping Alice’s chin when the juice she sipped through a straw spilled from the slack of her mouth. Behind them, the oxygen bottle lay in the grass like an unexploded bomb.

When the scones had been eaten, Ella and Kirsty went to the kitchen and came out with the cake. Larry used his Zippo to light the candles – one for every ten years of Alice’s life – and while the candles burned they stood up to sing ‘Happy Birthday’, finishing the song with a burst of applause. Ella blew out the candles. They clapped again and took their slices of cake, and after trying a few forkfuls of sugary sponge and praising it, the guests began to take their leave.

Mrs Dzerzhinsky blamed her tears on hay fever (‘Worse every year!’). Miss Lynne knelt by the side of the wheelchair, then went, with a hurried wave, through the trees to her car. Christopher Joy, sweeping off his hat, kissed Alice’s hand in a gesture that was genuinely gallant. Osbourne said he would volunteer for the clearing-up detail, and in the kitchen, his jacket dropped over the back of a chair, he tried to make himself useful by passing absorbent paper towels to Mrs Samson, who wept openly and noisily as she wrapped the leftover sandwiches in clingfilm.