‘This isn’t the sort of merry chat we should be having, on a private ski lift taking us up a private mountain to a private club,’ I say. In a minute, we will ski off the chair together to have our £35,000 lunch.

Granville calls it this because he eats there once a year and this is the cost of joining the all-inclusive Eagle Club, a club that turns away princes and film stars and only allows members to visit a maximum of three times a year. Granville, I had noticed earlier, had specially put on his Eagle Club jersey with its badge over his heart, which was designed by Valentino – one of the designer’s conditions of membership.

‘Look, Rose,’ he says, suddenly. ‘This is incredibly important. This Clare woman. Someone has to stop her moving to Godminster, don’t you think? Will it be you, or will it be me?’

‘Oh, come on, Gran,’ I say, patting pockets to check presence of lip salve, Vuarnet ski goggles, purse and ski pass, items all provided by Granville – except my purse. ‘I’m sure Clare has no intention of destroying the Fleming family. She’s only renting. It’s all fine. She’s not going to freak out. What would she gain? She has as much to lose as they do.’

‘Lord knows what she’s really up to,’ says Granville, pulling on his gloves, and checking to see whether I’m ready for him to lift the bar so we can glide off the lift in the direction of the £35,000 lunch. ‘Sounds like a bloody dangerous game, though.’

Anyway, Cath and Granville are very merry at lunch, as we all are – it’s always such a relief on a skiing holiday when everyone meets in the right place at roughly the right time, as so much of the holiday is spent waiting at the top of ski lifts and mountains for people who never appear.

Granville kicks off by ordering a magnum of rosé and some crostini with dark morel mushrooms in a savoury cream sauce, scattered with parsley.

During the meal, I see something. Granville has changed.

He starts telling me all about some course he’s signed on to in London. Psychotherapy. I don’t let on that Mimi has already given me advance warning of this. Mimi had said that in her part of London, it was routine: women stopped working because their husbands were making so much money, then they had low self-esteem, and then they saw therapists to address the low self-esteem, and then they became hooked on the talking drug and trained as therapists themselves. Mimi knows about Granville’s change of course because she saw some letter or something.

‘Yup, he’s shrink-rapping,’ says Cath, without letting on whether she’s for or against.

‘But what about the hedge fund?’ asks the baron. ‘La famille Cobb still has to eat, non?’