‘The silly gel should never have got married,’ I hear Celia Bryanston say in Serena’s mother’s bedroom. Celia, who has seen a thing or two in her time, has nipped into the bathroom after Serena and must be taking the whole sanguinary situation in at a glance. A pad with a Rorschach blot of blood is, I bet, visible in the bamboo waste-bin. ‘Let alone to him. Most unsuitable,’ she shudders, passing me. I decide that she is very unpleasant, that she and Lulu deserve each other, and that Celia must be the last person apart from Lady E to find out today’s big story, which is that Colin is not quite so low-born as the nasty snobs would believe. Not that birth has got anything to do with anything. Except it does.

‘Honestly,’ Celia Bryanston tuts. ‘In my day, one waited for three months, after one had Started a Baby, just to make sure it took.’

Hours later, we stagger home. Via the shop, to pick up a few things for supper. I’m going to do something simple, like a three-cheese soufflé and salad.

Pierre and I are relieved to have escaped Court Place. It’s 4:30 p.m. Half an hour ago, Serena and Colin pretended to leave as if for their honeymoon, but actually slipped off to the antenatal unit at Godminster General. Both looked deathly. Lulu and Celia Bryanston have been driven back to Godminster Hall at speed after Cath Cobb and Serena, who were both in the gazebo, overheard Celia and Lulu speculating about the bridal pair from the depths of the grotto, and Celia bellowed something about whether Serena and Colin would ever have got married if she hadn’t been ‘in pup’, and Lulu answered something about the pair having got ‘weddinged’ rather than ‘married’, as if the whole point of their union was drawing attention to themselves, presents and so on, rather than making their lives together because they loved each other.

It was unfortunate. Celia has a very loud voice, being deaf and, as for Lulu, I don’t think she even realized that what she and her mother-in-law were debating was in the poorest taste. Granville had a quiet word with Ned, and that was that.

Mimi and Ralph and the children left at about the same time, Ralph audibly saying to Mimi as they got into the Subaru, ‘Well, that was very lavish but I stick to my guns, give me a decent funeral every time,’ but everyone else was still pretending that nothing had gone wrong, that it had all been a simply perfect English country wedding.