The only jarring note, apart from the two men talking blithering pretentious nonsense, that is, was that in another bit of floor space, there appeared to be a carefully constructed pile of logs.

Kasmin even started asking Pierre about them, while Pernilla and I wandered around them. I pretended I knew all about them. I think I pretended at one stage that I’d even helped. Suddenly, I wanted to be part of it, now that someone so famous and influential and loaded was willing to part with good money, to invest in Pierre.

‘I do hope you’ll all come to the private view,’ I say to the girls, pouring more water and drinking from the glass, to plump up my skin. ‘At the Kasmin Foundation. We hardly know anyone in London any more, so we need all the support we can get. Mimi, you don’t know any of the art critics? From your days as a journalist?’

‘Um…’ parries Mimi.

‘Is it true he paid £3 million for the lot?’ asks Lulu, sulkily.

‘Uhuh,’ I say, with nonchalance. ‘After all, Pierre did throw in the logs.’

‘So you may have to drop your complaint, then, Rose,’ Lulu observes.

‘What’s that, Lulu?’

‘No longer can you legitimately whine that Pierre’s annoying habit of working away in his studio round the clock, rather than doing a proper job, has cost the family hundreds of thousands of pounds in earnings foregone.’

‘Mm, it’s a shame, that,’ I answer, ‘but I can live with it.’

All this is clearly too, too irritating to Lulu. As we all know, she and Ned are living off capital and the rents from the cottages, and as for the GodLitFest – it costs them a fortune every year. And now the Bryanstons can’t flog land to developers, either, without totally pissing off the whole village. They’re even forking out to keep the Spodders on their own land, which is a deeply gratifying conclusion to the affair of the windmill to everyone in Honeyborne apart from the Bryanstons themselves.

I gaze at Lulu smugly. When she sees me looking at her, I smile, which seems to provoke something in her, because she chooses this moment to lay down Vogue. ‘Rose, actually… there’s something I’ve being meaning to tell you, too,’ Lulu says, in an odd, strained voice. Mimi and I look at each other in alarm. ‘I’ve been wondering whether I should, to be honest, but I saw a psychotherapist – well, actually a friend who’s training to be one – and she said I should. In fact, she said I shouldn’t keep things like this bottled up, it would be detrimental to my health and accelerate ageing if I did.’