I am just about to reply to her email, saying that I am now actually thinking more along the lines of pasta salad, cold ham and stuff, green salad and birthday cake, and that my budget can’t stretch to more than about £10 a head, but I never do, because there is a commotion, and I never send the email.

‘Who are those women?’ Ralph is bellowing. ‘And what on earth are they doing in our garden?’

I rush to the window, to see who is out there. Ralph has not made it his mission – unlike me, who knows that my life literally depends on it – to know all the Village People by name. We all lean over my scarred enamel butler’s sink and peer past my dusty jumble of pots of herbs and jugs on the windowsill.

Gwenda Melplash and Ruth Wingfield have got a sort of rope halter and are putting it over Trumpet’s head.

‘We called, but no one answered,’ Ruth yodels in our direction. ‘We’ve come for Trumpet, sorry we’ve taken so long to get round to it!’

‘Have I got noose for you,’ says Ralph.

‘Quick, Mirabel, Ceci, run!’ I order. ‘Go and stop them!’ I do not let on that I must have somehow given permission for this, during one of my baffling conversations with Ruth/Gwenda about cubbing or hacking, as I don’t want any of my family to blame me.

‘No way, Mum,’ Mirabel says, as if I have finally lost my last remaining marble. ‘1. those women are well frightening, and 2. like, I’m wearing new Uggs and the grass is wet, yeah?’

Then I see them patting Posy, as if she is a pet, and then they start jogging with Trumpet very fast over the wet grass towards the five-bar gate, a slightly ungainly action that recalls the reliably awful bit during Crufts when owners have to canter on two legs around the show-ring alongside their dogs. One of them – Gwenda – opens it with a flick, as if she’s practised it before, and they clatter off down the lane, all three at a rising trot, without even a backwards glance at the stricken Posy.

I let out a cry. I now remember, much too late, that there was a message about a week ago from Ruth Wingfield, saying they would pop up on Saturday, calling first to check we were in, but I don’t recall Ruth spelling out what for.

I sigh. I know I can’t fight it.

Since the arrests of Henry Pike and Martin Thomas, everyone in the village has been keen to rally round and support the hunt. And this, in my case, clearly means yielding up our darling shaggy family pet to the iron will of the ‘trot on’ brigade, and watching impotently as they ‘borrow’ i.e. ‘steal’ our much loved Shetland/Exmoor pony in order to have her ready for the cubbing season.