But it was my parents and the Flatmans who were the real flies in the ointment. The reason they had sent for me – not in concert, you must understand; neither household was in communication with the other except through private detectives and the Jewish secret police – the reason they had separately insisted that I immediately get up to London to see them was that they had finally decided (again not in concert) on marriage. That’s to say my father had decided to marry Rabika Flatman and my mother had retaliated by deciding to marry Menashe. I fully realize that it might have been the other way round, that my father might have been the one who was doing the retaliating, but it should be understandable why I am inclined to favour the man in such disputes, just at present. (It’s wonderful not feeling answerable to Camilla!) Either way, this flurry of Hymeneal preparation ought not to have posed me any problems: I was absolutely even-handed in my congratulations and good wishes; I wanted them all to be happy in precisely equal measure; and I was as willing to be witness or page-boy or guest-of-honour or whatever else was required of me for the one set as I was for the other. The trouble was that the dates happened upon for my mother to become Mrs Flatman and Mrs Flatman to become Mrs Fugleman coincided. I don’t mean that they coincided a bit – that I’d be pushed to get from one lot of nuptials to the other – I mean that they coincided exactly – to the hour, to the minute. Two zero five in Finchley; two zero five in Tooting. If I’d owned a helicopter I could not have made it to both; if I’d been Camilla’s brother I could not have heard my old mother and my new mother promise that they would. As for changing one of the times – that was out of the queston. ‘Let them change theirs,’ I was told on each side of the river. To a suspicious nature it might well have looked as though the coincidence wasn’t a coincidence at all, but a way of getting me to come off the fence, to declare my allegiance once and for all. That was what it came to anyway – whether they’d planned it to or not – a test of my ultimate loyalty. Would I go to theirs or would I go to theirs? Which one of them, or rather which pair of them, did I love the most?

‘Actually, that should be “the more”,’ I explained to my mother. ‘If I’m choosing between two pairs only, it’s “the more”. But if you’d like to throw another couple in …’

‘When it comes to love, Barney,’ Menashe replied for her, ‘the most is the least your mother and I are prepared to settle for.’