I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The name Harry Vilbert – brought up in Fitz’s presence. It was against everything that we’d agreed. It was an abrogation of all her promises. ‘That’ll do, Sharon,’ I ordered.

‘Who’s Harry Vilbert?’ asked Fitzpiers.

‘Nobody,’ I told him.

‘A hypnotist,’ said Sharon.

‘I love hypnotists,’ said Fitzpiers. ‘I went to one once, to stop me smoking. He smoked like a train himself. He wore a buttoned cardigan and carpet slippers and he smelt of sprouts. What do you go to yours for? To help you write? Or to remove some other kind of blockage?’

‘I don’t go to him,’ I said.

‘He went to him,’ said Sharon.

‘That’s not true either. I fell into his clutches.’

‘How wonderful!’ said Fitzpiers. ‘What did he do – turn you into an opera singer? Or did he get you to procure small boys for him?’

‘He did neither,’ said Sharon. ‘He regressed him.’

‘Sharon!’

Fitzpiers just wanted to make sure he had heard that right. ‘He regressed him?’

And I wanted to make sure that he had not. ‘Sharon,’ I boomed, ‘that’s enough!’

‘Yes. He regressed him. Twice.’

‘Sharon!’

Fitzpiers sat up in bed. You couldn’t hope to see a man having a better time. I think we all knew that he would never again experience a happier Christmas. But he was also taking a scientific interest in what he was being told. He wanted to be clear about the details. ‘Do you mean he regressed him back to his own childhood?’ he asked. ‘Or did he take him back even further?’ It didn’t at all help my temper that in Fitzpiers’s fidgety excitement his penis had become visible from under the bedclothes.

Myself, I leapt from the bed and issued an ultimatum to my wife. ‘Not another word Sharon, I warn you.’

But she rose on her pillows, a pink circle of recklessness glowing on each cheek. Her breasts were uncovered again and the nipples also seemed to flush and start, as if alive to her temerity. She addressed Fitzpiers. ‘Oh, well beyond his childhood,’ she confided. ‘He went back a hundred years.’

‘A hundred years!’ All the disparate elements of Fitzpiers’s face expressed astonishment. I’d never seen him so unified. ‘And who did Barney discover that he’d been?’ he asked. ‘A footsoldier in Her Majesty’s expeditionary forces or a private secretary to Disraeli?’

‘Somebody more notable than either,’ said Sharon. It was odd that she should be so vindictive towards me as I was and yet so proud of who I’d been. ‘Why don’t you try and guess?’ she dared Fitzpiers.