When they appear in a sort of vision of youth and beauty in the doorway, Henry Pike glances up and shouts, ‘Raus! ’ in a Teutonic accent, like a German stormtrooper. Biddy is in the middle of saying, ‘Being Master of Horse to two dozen juniors was the highlight of last summer,’ to the assembled company. ‘I know I was sleeping in the trailer on straw but, after Pony Camp, can life get any better?’

Naturally, at the bellow of ‘Raus! ’ after the previous conversation, Ralph and I start anxiously, but Granville rushes over to meet our guests who, it turns out, are Jeremy and Suki Rous, which leads me to conclude that Henry Pike’s delightful bark of a command is a famous joke amongst the gratin of Honeyborne, a joke that in due course I expect to find as funny as my new neighbours do.

And then, of course, there is the surprise.

The house guests. Virginie and Mathieu Lacoste. We fall on each other with cries of unfeigned joy but I hear a small voice whisper, “Ere come trobble.’

∗

We ooze through to the panelled, mediæval dining room, where yet another blazing fire is warming the biosphere.

‘Is the panelling old, do you think?’ I ask Ralph, who is very attentive to these things, and prefers houses to people.

‘No,’ he replies, after a brief glance, taking in the scrolled panelling and the little painted heraldic flags that form a frieze around the cuboid room. ‘It’s Victorian.’

Granville seats everyone with fluid competence, placing me on his right, and the Reverend on my other side.

‘I’m thrilled to have you captive,’ I say, buttering some crusty brown bread, dense with seeds and grains and Omega goodness. I am feeling very sleepy, suddenly. ‘By the time the evening’s over, I expect to have secured my plot for perpetuity in the graveyard at St Mary of All Angels.’ We unfurl our napkins and, after a very short time, Cath sails in carrying what I think at first is a large yellow pumpkin, which exactly matches the sunny cotton fabric of her ironed Williams-Sonoma apron.

‘Or else I want a family vault,’ I continue, before clapping my hands and making an admiring noise to make Cath feel that someone around her table – another wife and mother – appreciates the effort put in to the occasion, which is only right given that all the men around the table, as usual, think they’ve put on a jolly good show simply by turning up.