Mirabel is poring over something on the computer with Ceci, and intermittently saying, ‘That totally sucks,’ and ‘Like, no way,’ as if she lived in Orange County.

Cas, who had been punting a football around outside, comes in, and I start counting the seconds until the words, ‘I’m bored,’ drop from his lips.

Posy is in the garden, feeding Trumpet carrots, while Trumpet takes the carrots in his mouth and paws at the gate to remind her that he is a pony, and thus reasonably keen to do pony things, rather than remain penned in the paddock.

Ralph is reading the papers, the default occupation of so many husbands during so-called ‘family time’, a task that he can easily make stretch through till Sunday night, unless, that is, he feels a sudden, urgent need to cast his fly over untroubled waters.

And I am – well, I’ve cleared up the kitchen to the extent that I can put my laptop down on the table, and I don’t have to think about preparing a wholesome family meal for at least two hours, so I am actually doing two things, reading through the answers to the ad I’d posted online for a new au pair boy and trying to work out the seating plan for Ralph’s birthday lunch, which has, as these things have an ominous tendency to do, become bigger than springtime.

I send Rose, who is off skiing with the Cobbs, a text.

Ana’s not here. She left, last week, claiming that a grandmother was gravely ill, a story that both of us knew was 100 per cent falsehood. Still, I felt almost fond of her as we hugged and I felt her ribs through her thin sweater and anorak at Godminster station but, mainly, it has to be admitted, because she was leaving and I didn’t have to sack her. I could have sacked her for any number of things – the fact that she never went outside, even though I took the trouble to show her the three counties walk, so she could do it by herself, and the fact that she once tried to ask me, in a rare communicative moment, what the ‘life of the bed’ was like with Ralph. For her part, she could have walked out for any number of reasons, among them boredom, loneliness, an allergy to our house, and an aversion to mud.

I never really trained her to perform my bidding. It’s my fault, I suppose, and the one time I asked her to walk Calypso she managed to be chased by cows and stung by a horsefly, plus there are so many bats in her bedroom that she had to sleep with her head covered by one of those domed mesh contraptions adorned with butterflies that I use to cover the cheese and summer pudding, etc., in the larder. So, in fact, fair play to her.