Max thinks about it. ‘He’s very like his father. Mole wasn’t unfriendly or standoffish but there was a solitariness about him. He was a first-rate officer, his men loved him, but there was just this air he carried with him, as if he had some secret.’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t explain it. Sam’s a bit the same. Self-contained.’

‘I’m not surprised after what you’ve just told me about his family history,’ says Cara. ‘It’s so strange that they should both be orphaned in such a terrible way and both brought home to The Keep as infants. Awful.’

‘At least Mole had his sisters,’ says Max, ‘although Susanna was not quite two so she really didn’t know what was happening. And Fliss and Mole knew their grandmother. Sam had nobody except Lizzie.’

‘So Lizzie stayed with him as a kind of nanny? And now she’s got married?’

Max nods. ‘David’s a really nice guy and I think it’s great for her. She’s been so important in Sam’s life and now it’s good that she’s going to have a whole new adventure whilst Sam starts his own new career in the navy. The time is right for them both.’

There’s a little silence.

‘Remember when Mother died,’ Cara says, ‘and then Father sold up in Sussex and moved us into the flat?’

‘Yes, of course I do. I was at Dartmouth at the time but it must have been harder for you. Very tough.’

Cara raises her eyebrows at him. ‘Seriously? You think it was tough to be living in swinging London after years of childhood with a reclusive, unapproachable and unpredictable mother and a mostly absent father?’ She begins to laugh. ‘Do you remember Harmony?’

He smiles too, albeit reluctantly at the foolish name. ‘Hermione? Yes, of course I do. It’s not exactly run of the mill to be introduced to one’s father’s mistress when you’re twenty-one. I’m not likely to forget it.’

Cara gives a sigh of happy remembrance. ‘She was utter heaven,’ she says. ‘That’s why I called her Harmony. After all those years of bitter silences, chilly atmospheres, the bliss of being with someone who talked and laughed and took me to the theatre, to the ballet, to see Peter Pan. We went to art galleries, met her chums for lunch. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And she and Father were so happy together even though she was much younger than he was. He was like a different person.’