Both Lulu and I have taken the precaution of oiling our hair and slicking it back, so we both look like sleek seals. Mimi’s hair is standing out around her head so she looks a bit like Phil Spector during the Wall of Sound years.

‘Listen, Rose. I think it’s bloody great. I didn’t think that sort of thing ever happened in real life. Just remind us all again what did happen?’ Mimi cues me up.

‘Well,’ I say, trying to hide my pleasure, ‘last weekend, when he had Kasmin and Pernilla to stay, Gran asked me and Pierre to tea, on the Sunday – no, it was Saturday, because it was the day after the village hall meeting. Then he rang and said, actually, would it be all right if they came to us. I can’t remember which way round it was. So I said, of course.’

Lulu turns a page of her Vogue as if the story that Pierre’s entire collection had been snaffled up by Kasmin, the greatest modern art buyer of recent times was of considerably less significance than a new moisturizer stroke filler with pearlescent microbes for the delicate undereye region.

‘So, what could be more natural, after we’d drunk our first-flush Oolong and eaten my homemade scones in the kitchen, to wander out to the cutting garden, the kitchen garden, so Pernilla could pick some herbs to take back to Cottesmore Gardens? Taking in Pierre’s studio en route?’

‘Nothing,’ says Mimi, waggling her feet, as if that will dry her toenails faster.

When we pushed open the door to his studio, Pierre had been standing in the middle of the dusty floor, his face shining. At the sight of us – and the collector, Kasmin, of course – he looked animated and engaged, in a way I hadn’t seen for years.

Inside, there was a series of egg-shaped sculptures, more like pods, arrayed before us, each about five and a half feet high. Some had openings, clefts, and some had protuberances, like phalluses. They were astonishingly powerful. They must have taken ages.

‘Darling! What are they made of?’ I asked. I felt excited, but mainly because I was with Kasmin, who is famous, rich and powerful.

Pierre didn’t answer, and then, as we wandered around them, he explained that he wanted to explore deep-rooted metaphysical polarities: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place, the solid and the intangible. ‘I want to make body into sky,’ Pierre said, and Kasmin nodded, as if this made perfect sense. ‘Male into female.’

‘Yes,’ said Kasmin, caressing a pod. ‘Is it about whether the content is resident in the viewer, or whether it’s resident in the work?’

‘It’s a subtle, yet very clear… manipulation of the act of looking,’ answered Pierre.