‘Good!’ I remember hearing her exclaim when she received the news that her brother had turned his sports car over (I think he drove a Triumph Stag) at a busy intersection.

‘Pity!’ I remember her saying to herself when she learnt that he was only scratched.

I met Camilla’s brother just once. He boycotted our relationship for some reason best known to himself – ‘Don’t investigate it,’ Camilla advised me – but came down here to see her when his fourth or fifth marriage broke up. He drove straight from the divorce court, without stopping for so much as a cup of tea, and claimed a new world land-speed record. I had no means of checking that, but his wheels smoked for two hours after he arrived. I had no means of checking the number of children (all boys) who stared out of the passenger windows either, every one of whom, Camilla assured me, was his. Like many aggressively suicidal men he was consumed by the need to duplicate and reduplicate himself. In a fairer world my mother would have had him for a son.

‘I see you’re still looking petite,’ he said to Camilla the moment they met.

‘And I see you’re still overpopulating the globe with little fat versions of yourself,’ she replied, opening the car doors and allowing her swarming nephews to roll into the village street.

‘There are some you haven’t met. Hank, Simeon, Victor, Rocky, Vidor, Zed, come here. Jason, show your Aunty Camilla your muscles.’

‘I’m pleased you’re still concentrating your fatherly energies on bringing them up to be sweet-natured.’

‘Just like their Aunty. But what about you? Not able to have any yourself?’

‘Not choosing to. One of us has to do something about stamping us out.’

‘Why don’t you get fucked?’ he asked, kissing her on both cheeks.

‘He seems a nice kind of person,’ I remarked to Camilla after he’d left.