I have already forgotten that I had roped in other willing and more competent hands to do much of the heavy lifting, i.e. provide and assemble the tent, order in chairs and tables (Cath), decorate the invitations and place-cards (Rose) and make the food (Giancarlo). As far as the record went, it was all my own work, and I intended – despite the Grand Guignol finale to proceedings – to take full credit.

‘I think all anyone was clocking was you, Mimi,’ Rose answers in a waspish voice. ‘It is quite dramatic for the hostess to faint just as the entire party has risen to its feet to toast her.’

‘Oh come on, Rose, I didn’t do it on purpose,’ I protest, squirting on more factor 40.

‘Darling, I’m joking,’ Rose says. ‘I think you’re being amazing. What a time you’re having. With the… you know, and now this. I’m absolutely admiring of you, I really am.’

I don’t answer. I’m remembering. When Clare appeared framed in the tent, apparently I (and this is according to Mirabel, who accused me of ‘attention-seeking’ because Daddy was making a speech ‘for the first time for, like, for ever’) fainted. Into Michael Hutton’s lap.

The child in Clare’s arms looked exactly like Cas at eighteen months, the child in Clare’s arms looked exactly like the little brother Cas had begged for, and not only that, the child in Clare’s arms was wearing exactly the same clothes that Cas himself had worn as a toddler, right down to the pair of red and blue Paddington Bear Wellington boots, and when I saw the child, I knew for sure something that I’d known, subconsciously, for a while.

Rose and I are lying on two teak loungers, dressed with cream cushions with navy ticking. There are white towels behind our heads. We are poolside at Sir Michael’s Great House in Jamaica, called Perdition.

‘Not bad, Sir Michael’s little place in the Caribbean,’ I remark, to change the subject.

‘Mmm… very Ralph Lauren,’ is Rose’s observation. We did not know, at that point, that it was after a visit to Perdition, with its palette of navy and white against tropical hardwoods and aged crackly chestnut leather, its storm candles, break-fronted bookcases, polished wide-planked floors, hanging lanterns, four-posters, green sweeping lawns, tropical gardens, including a tree that produced a strange, sexual fruit that none of us, despite our advanced combined ages, had ever tasted before, that at least one of Mr Lauren’s Home Collections had been inspired.