I feel my eyes fill with tears. It’s not every day that one hears an Englishman, let alone an Etonian, pay such tribute to a woman, let alone his wife. ‘She’s shown tremendous bottle in bullying me into having this party, for my fortieth birthday. I’m so glad she did, I honestly am – I think the clincher was when she pointed out that I hadn’t had a party since my twenty-first, and we hadn’t had a party since we married. So now let us kill the fatted calf or, failing that, cut the candled cake and, without further ado, I would like you all to raise your glasses, please, and join me in a toast.’

And then Ralph freezes. He goes white, his shoulders suddenly stiffen, as if he is bracing himself for a volley of shots from the firing line. Not everyone seems to notice, as they are all grabbing their glasses, and laughing. I follow the line of his gaze to the rose-swagged entrance of the tent.

Framed in the door of the tent is Clare Sturgis. In her arms is a small boy. He has brown hair, and a blue hand-knitted jersey with a collar, and brown corduroy shorts, and some short Paddington Bear blue and red wellies that have already branded themselves on my memory a decade earlier.

Everyone turns briefly to look, following his gaze, and just as obediently rises to their feet as one when Ralph’s arm involuntarily rises, his glass with it, the knife to cut the cake in the other hand.

Holding their glasses aloft, all look to Ralph for his cue. But none is forthcoming. His eyes are fixed not on the woman in the door, but on the little boy in her arms, as if he’s seen a ghost.

‘Don’t I know that woman?’ I hear Sir Michael roar, as if I’m under water. ‘Didn’t she look around Hutton? Kept going on about food security, and whatnot? Unhinged, if you ask me,’ he informs his neighbour.

‘To Mimi,’ everyone choruses, to cover the confusion. ‘Tight lines!’ roars Ralph’s fellow member of the Piscatorial Society, which is, I think, what fishermen say to wish each other luck.

‘To Mimi!’

And that is the last thing I hear.

One Week Later

‘Well, I suppose there are some upsides,’ I say as I sip my Planter’s Punch, ‘to discovering that your husband has had a love-child by your old best friend and new worst frenemy in the middle of a party, especially one you have single-handedly organized for him yourself, down to the carnations in the Chianti bottles on the middle of the table. By the way, the Chianti bottles and pepper mills and carnations were supposed to be ironic – do you think everyone, you know, clocked that, Rose? Sooo embarrassing if people didn’t.’