I didn’t know anything about it until Garry, the landlord, who serves underneath a sign saying ‘Garry’s Bar’, asked me if Calypso was ‘OK around wolves’.

I didn’t really take it in and then he said, ‘Because they smell differently than dogs.’

And then he brought this rangy, ribby thing with pale eyes and trembling flanks through on a lead and I quivered, ‘What sort of wolf is it?’, drawing Calypso close, and he said, ‘A wolf wolf,’ and that he had gone to Alaska to get it when it was so big, holding his hands apart like an angler describing his catch. Anyway, the animal’s name is Cherokee, but the children call it Wolf Wolf.

As for the nettle-eating contest, well, that’s a contest during which people eat as many yards of nettles as they can, and if you don’t believe me, there’re pictures of contestants, gaping mouths stained with green, pinned up next to the postcard advertising the next meeting of the Pudding Club.

You have (2) New Messages

Although I had discovered after doing an online search that there is a riding stable in Honeyborne with ‘qualified owner on site’ and ‘excellent hacking’ that takes children of all ages and abilities, I couldn’t resist switching screens and clicking open the new arrivals.

It takes ages to open files on my laptop – so annoying, I must have a virus. It’s funny how a delay of just a few seconds can have the power to irritate so much.

‘British Gas Launches New Website’ is the first message.

But the second I stare at for ages before opening. It’s from Clare Sturgis. My heart lurches, and then starts hammering, just seeing her name in my inbox.

I’m reading it now.

It’s like a digest of all the news and gossip from Lonsdale Gardens in one mouthful. Everything I ever wanted to know about what’s going on back in Notting Hill – but was too proud to ask.

Here we go.

I wonder who gave her my new email address?

She hopes I’m well… she misses me (yeah, right – she bought my house, my children’s home, from my husband behind my back, but hey, what’s a two-million-pound house on a Notting Hill communal garden between friends)… my old cleaner, Fatima (Clare poached her too), is very well and Fatty would send love but has sciatica and isn’t working this week… baby Joe is toddling… Trish and Jeremy Dodd-Noble have bought a super-yacht… Anoushka is pregnant with number two (Oof. Hurts. I’ve only just recovered from the cosh blow of little Darius coming along while Si Rasparian was supposed to be in exclusive, extramarital relationship with ME)… stuff about her boring garden design being on hold during Joe’s ‘precious early childhood years’… how she’s interested in the broader possibilities of smallholding and growing veg and becoming more self-sufficient… stuff about London being in the flood zone, and needing to find bolt-hole with food security on higher ground… how Gideon is finding the communal garden ‘too intense’ now they’re parents… what’s it like in Dorset… how is Ralph… da da da… and oh yes, here we are. Here we go.