We drive for hours in rain like stair-rods, and then drink like fish to get through it, and plough our way through soggy quiche followed by damp apple tart with cries of ‘You are clever, what wonderful pastry’ (no way of staying carb- let alone carbon-neutral in the countryside), and stay at least four hours, three of which are consumed with conversation about hunting or who’s not speaking to whom or the reclassification of roads used as public paths. Then I have a row with Ralph about which one of us is going to lose our licence in order to drive home blind drunk in the pitchy blackness. So, a dinner party basically means driving for two hours to meet exactly the same people, and talk about exactly the same things (you always meet the same people because if anyone gives a dinner party, word quickly gets around and everyone feels mortally insulted if they are not invited, with the result that the same cast of characters convenes monthly, only in different houses, which are all alike in one respect – they are at least half an hour’s drive away and cold as tombs). And then, at our age, it takes at least one whole day to recover from the alcoholic overload. It’s got to the stage – I put it down to the gruelling commute to London, the fact that his new job is really pressurized with the Russian situation re oil and gas and something called the interconnector, whatever that is – where Ralph’s only truly happy when the Met issues one of its extreme weather warnings telling people not to make journeys unless they are strictly necessary. He doesn’t seem to get it when I tell him I’ll drive any distance, walk over coals, wade through raging torrents, simply to avail the Fleming family of a hot meal I haven’t had to cook and clear up after myself. Especially now I’m not within spitting distance of seven world-class delis and have to cook every meal from scratch using challenging nose-to-tail ingredients from the village shop, like turnips and marrowbone.

It was tough enough getting Ralph out of the house in London. If something required any effort on his part, i.e. if during an evening he was obliged to have some sort of exchange with a mummy about her child’s special needs or a daddy about his funds under management, he would complain for hours after. It was only if he surprised himself by actually enjoying it – mainly because he had found some soulmate to talk about fly-fishing with – would Ralph warm up. ‘Painless,’ he might say or, if he’d really enjoyed himself, ‘entirely painless’.

Now, when I moan about anything, such as mess or the cleaning or the driving, Ralph just says, in that way men do when they think there’s a slight risk of having to do something on the home front themselves, ‘Well, get someone to do the cleaning for you,’ or ‘Just buy it all from M&S,’ as if, ta-daa! the dreaded dinner party was sorted, and as if no one had ever had the idea to get a cleaner or buy a prepared meal ever before in the history of mankind. But the problem is, though I’d love to believe in cleaners, I suspect they don’t exist here for people like me (i.e. those whose houses actually need cleaning), and now I have Ana, I am probably going to be banned from complaining entirely.