‘Life without tomatoes is beyond contemplation,’ I say. ‘I do hope there’s nothing for mains –’ I go on, to annoy Ralph, whom I am still cross with. He hates the word ‘mains’ which he says is a ‘bastard plural noun made from an adjective’. Other banned words and phrases – relating to restaurants and pubs alone, that is – are ‘Carvery‘, ‘Sunday Roasts‘, and ‘Sweet Trolley’ – which makes eating out in most rural hostelries – another noun unprotected by the First Amendment – a hazardous and rage-flecked enterprise. He once almost left a place when he read the menu and it said ‘Herb-crusted rack of lamb sat on a bed of crushed new pots‘, for all the reasons you might imagine. I gaze at Ralph fondly as I continue, ‘–because risotto’s my favourite food in the whole world, followed by Ambrosia creamed rice, which is the next best thing. And I intend to eat a whole lot of it.’

‘Oh God, me too,’ says Granville, as he digs in. ‘At Harrow, I’d beg Mummy to bring Ambrosia creamed rice as tuck. I could eat a whole tin, cold, with a spoon. Father Christmas used to put a tin opener in my stocking.’

‘In answer to your question, Mimi,’ says Cath, ‘the risotto is the entrée. Grindy pepper, Maddocks?’ Maddocks disappears in search of peppermills. ‘There are several more courses after this, with all the fixins, sweet honeychile!’ She speaks in the warm gravy-and-grits tone of a Southern mammy.

After the laughter has died down, we all address our plates, and I begin to worry there’ll be a silence. When there was a silence at the last dinner thing we went to, at the Huttons’, Celia Bryanston filled it with the words, ‘Well, it does appear that Rose Musgrove has finally lost her looks,’ which was so rude and also, for that matter, inaccurate, that I almost fell off my chair. But everyone else just kept on masticating their lamb shanks implacably, as if Celia said this sort of thing all the time.

Ned Bryanston looks over at his current wife, Lulu, and it’s as if she’s been waiting for this signal. I decide Ned’s attractive in an obvious, James Bond kind of way, while Lulu’s attractive in an obvious, Bond-girl kind of way. I also notice that Ralph is picking out the dried blueberries – which Cath scattered over the leaves at the last minute, ‘for crunch’, as she put it – and leaving them on the side, just as he does with 1. raisins, 2. peppercorns and 3. bayleaves.