‘Pass the butter, will you?’ one gun barked to another. ‘After you with the Daily Mail, old chap. I want to see if I’m in Richard Kay, and we haven’t got all day till the first drive.’

‘Only if you’ll stop hogging the marmalade, you utter swine,’ the other man had responded. ‘And you’re not in Richard Kay, but you are in Ephraim Hardcastle, you media tart. As you’re up, Granville, old chap, you couldn’t pass me my cartridge belt over there on the dresser, could you?’

Ralph once told me that you could always tell which members of a house party had crept into each other’s rooms the previous night, because they were always the two people who were rudest to each other at breakfast. He had also told me about a lecherous uncle of his – a very minor peer – who would go about the bedrooms, gently knocking on doors with his erection, until someone admitted him. As a result, I was monitoring the party at breakfast narrowly, and had pricked up my ears at this exchange.

Rose swishes in, wearing one of her long Ralph Lauren skirts, her Spanish riding boots and a tight-fitted chestnut moleskin hacking jacket with a velvet collar and matching leather gauntlets. She holds a furry Cossack hat in her gloved hand. She is, I decide, definitely working the Lady Aline in The Shooting Party look. The wilder her personal life becomes, the more buttoned up her attire.

‘Hello, Rose,’ I cry out, giving her an especially warm welcome, given what Ralph has termed her ‘late-onset nymphomania’ appears to be very public knowledge.

As for Lulu Bryanston… well, Lulu’s wearing a Selina Blow frock coat and very tight jeans and lace-up Ilse Jacobsen wellies in one of the new, hot colours, i.e. not pink or floral or patterned or even green, but putty-coloured. I am ashamed I even know what the new hot colours in wellies are, but I do.

I don’t greet her so warmly, as she must be at least a decade younger than me and does not need any encouragement whatsoever. Furthermore, Rose and I also suspect her of spreading the gossip about Jesse Marlon and Rose, though how Lulu knows remains a mystery. But then, as I’ve always wondered, how does anyone ‘know’ who is going to bed with whom?

Pierre, as a gun, is kitted out appropriately – holey dark-green jersey, checked shirt, moleskin, the works – and is working his way steadily through a huge mound of hot protein. He and the other breakfasters are becoming flushed as the room fills with enough woven sheep to clothe Scott of the Antarctic and all his men, and their bodies fill with enough sausage, eggs and bacon to keep them going till some time next year.