My father’s resounding champagne toast, delivered into the very eyes of Camilla and embarrassing, apparently, to everyone but her, remains as the centrepiece of my recollections of our wedding day. Apart from that, everything went just as it might have been expected to go. Cards and telegrams had arrived for us in abundance in the morning – for which the postman never forgave us – amongst them a loving message and a cheque from Camilla’s parents (they had given up attending their children’s weddings out of a sense of decency), and an envelope from Sharon’s solicitors containing a photograph of Asimova in a bridesmaid’s outfit. After we had signed the register at Trewoe we were driven by limousine to Trevail from where we made the short journey back into the village in a pony and trap. That was Camilla’s concession to rural romance, that and the wild flowers she had braided around the straw hat she wore for all her weddings, for luck. In the afternoon Camilla’s favourite fishermen and farm hands turned up in their suits, wrapped themselves around Camilla – where they seemed to feel most safe – and sang until sunset about heartless sailors, pertinacious ploughboys, and saucy fiddlers. Max Loveday and Jeannie, the professor’s wife, came round to wish us happiness but couldn’t bring themselves to pronounce the word, and the last I saw of them they were having their fortunes told by Harry Vilbert. I can only suppose, since they didn’t stay, that Harry had promised them unbroken felicity, that’s to say even more of the same. Rabika Flatman, who had accompanied my father since it was definite that my mother wouldn’t make the journey, took me aside and complimented my bride and told me that she wished it could have been a double wedding. ‘In all senses?’ I asked, hopefully. But she didn’t understand. As I think I’ve already mentioned, she wasn’t Marghanita Laski. In the evening we all laughed and drank and kissed and were at times too familiar with one another – Camilla in particular being too familiar with my father, and Rabika Flatman going (not just out of jealousy, I hoped) just a touch too far with me. But then we were friends from way back.

All this was as it always is and as we wanted it to be. It was what took place the following morning that was a trifle odder.