Also, the fact that she is actually being allowed to give a party to celebrate Ralph’s fortieth shows that Ralph must be being extra-nice to her. He’d never agree to a party of any sort in normal circumstances, let alone one in which he was centre stage.

I haven’t said anything to her yet, but all this is for the best, because divorce – well, it’s out of the question, in the country. Marriage is perfectly bearable, so long as one has distractions and can handle those long silent bits in between rows. One wouldn’t wish the experience of being a country divorcée on anyone, let alone someone as nice as Mimi. All social life is organized by married women for the benefit of other married women, single divorcées are treated as vermin – and all because horsy matrons think you might try to steal their singularly ill-favoured, stumpy, balding husbands, who like to express their fun-loving, zany personalities by wearing bright-orange, red or yellow elephant cords, or novelty ties.

Which is intolerable in every way.

I shove the mobile back, as I don’t want to reply to the text and by mistake drop it down a crevasse, although doubtless Virginie would retrieve it in a trice. I settle back in the chair, feeling grateful that I am not freezing to death, and that we’re in late March and I can still feel my extremities.

‘How is Mimi?’ Granville asks. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘She’s fine. Well, actually…’

The long chair swings on its way to the top of the mountain (we were a bit early for lunch when we reached the lift, so Granville asked the operator to slow it down). We sit side by side and watch the snowboarders carve up the pistes, and the older couples gliding down in a more considered way. It seems the right moment to tell Granville, somehow.

As I speak, I enjoy the sight of the pine trees laden with smooth caps of snow, the sun gilding the peaks across the whole panorama, and we giggle at the English skiing very badly and laughing when they crash, and gaze in wonderment at the fearless little helmeted French children bombing straight down mountains.

Maybe it is the delicious freezing air, like breathing in chilled Krug, the prospect of a bubbling cheesy dish of tartiflette a few hundred yards up the mountain ahead, that nudges me into it.

Of course, I immediately have a pang of regret, as one does after revealing any confidence. Granville listens with concentration, concern and sympathy. When I get to the bit about the hospital, at Godminster, Gran is horrified. He shakes his head, sadly. I say, please don’t tell anyone I told you. He says, ‘What happens on the Wasserngrat, stays on the Wasserngrat,’ and checks how far we have to go till we glide off.