‘Well, that is my response entirely,’ says Mimi. ‘I can’t stand the idea of renting, anywhere! Especially one of those places where the owner says, “It takes very special people to appreciate Little Maltings,” and then it turns out that the reason why is because Little Maltings is a hovel in a bog with no running water which the family loves dearly for historic and sentimental reasons but is everyone else’s idea of the holiday house from Hell. The problem is, though,’ she says, looking down into her coffee, ‘well, there’s no budget for doing anything at Home Farm at the moment. I thought when we sold our house – well, Ralph’s family house, in Notting Hill – that we would be rolling, but then the trustees all waded in, and said though we could sell it, and of course buy Home Farm with cash, we had to leave the remainder in trust, for the children’s education. So selling up in London hasn’t been the financial lifeboat I thought it might be. The rising property market doesn’t, turns out, float all boats. Not ours, anyway. Nice for the children, though. Hey ho. So – shall we trickle on home, or shall we go completely wild and get another late?’ Mimi giggles when she says ‘late’ rather than ‘latte’. The couple who run the New Place can’t spell, a fact that gives her endless pleasure.

‘I’m loath to leave the warmth of here and go back to Home Farm. It’s like a freezer cabinet.’ She gets up, with her purse in her hand.

‘Mimi,’ I say, putting my hand on the magazines. ‘Put me out of my misery. What is all this?’

Mimi subsides back into her chair, and flips them over.

We both scream in unison, and the Labrador staggers to his feet and comes over, wagging his tail.

For the magazines our thirteen-year-old girls have been buying, in secret, and poring over while we thought they were safely adding to their Facebook and MySpace pages are… Brides. Modern Brides and Wedding. And last but not least, Martha Stewart Weddings.

All the covers feature dainty, wasp-waisted damsels in white holding bouquets and have coverlines such as ‘Perfect Day’, and ‘The Day You Always Dreamed Of’, alongside elaborately tiered and stepped cakes adorned with ribbons and crenellated icing or a spun-sugar-laced croquenbouch pyramid of choux buns.

We both look at each other in horror.

‘What did they say?’ I breathe. ‘And how on earth did they get Martha Stewart Weddings? The only person around here I can imagine might want it is Serena or Cath Cobb.’

‘I don’t know where they got them, but as for why they got them,’ Mimi says, ‘well, according to Ceci and Mirabel, who as you imagine I have interrogated under Gestapo conditions about this worrying development, what they say is –’

‘Yes?’

‘That all they want when they grow up is for their wedding days to be perfect.’

‘So what’s Pierre doing all day?’ Mimi asks, in a leading way, when she returns, balancing our brimming cups, and another flapjack on a saucer, which we have decided we need in the wake of the discovery that our daughters are living and breathing place settings, rose-petal confetti and trousseaux rather than something healthy, like older boys, skunk and gangsta rap. ‘Is he working on some mega-commission?’