And on the wooden, raised stage: Ned is at a long desk on the podium with Harvey Jones, Chairman of the Parish Council, looking through paperwork. Ned is trying to look concerned and responsive to opinion – but he still conveys the arrogance of aristocracy, the superiority of the upper-class Englishman who feels he has nothing to prove, as his family already did that, to the monarch’s satisfaction, over four hundred years ago.

‘While he may talk about the human family and the environment, this whole windmill thing has only served to confirm what we already knew,’ I whisper to Mimi. ‘Ned Bryanston only cares about his family.’

‘Like, dur, Rose,’ says Mimi. ‘Of course he does.’

Ned is sitting next to a man with white hair and a trimmed beard. There is a flipchart to the side, which we are all eyeing warily, in case we are forced to ingest data or understand diagrams.

‘Hey, clock Lulu’s T-shirt,’ whispers Mimi. ‘The Clash one. Saying “White Riot”. I used to have one just like it about twenty years ago, and now the very same one appears on Lulu as retro or vintage. God, it makes me feel old! As if Lulu knows anything about the Clash! I saw them live loads of times,’ she continues, sulkily. ‘Well, OK, I saw them once. But she probably got it from Rellik on Golborne Road, for about sixty quid.’

As she speaks, I become aware that Colin Watts is framed in the doorway to the left, ahead of where we are ensconced.

For a nanosecond, when my gaze rests on the tall frame and dark hair and thick brows, I think of Jesse Marlon, so am disappointed when the leather jacket, the fag, and the jeans as worn without fail by Watts hove into view.

‘Don’t look now, but it’s him, again,’ I say, nudging Mimi, who immediately swivels her head to the left, to see who’s in the doorway. ‘Oh God, so it is,’ she says, staring at him.

‘It’s funny, I barely ever noticed him before. Now we all need a kind of human pop-up blocker to get rid of him,’ Mimi says. ‘We have blocked a pop-up from Colin Watts! Click! We have blocked a pop-up from Colin Watts! Click!’ She mimes clicking a mouse with her right hand. ‘Rose? Are you OK?’

‘Very funny. Yes,’ I whisper.

I’d already treated Mimi to a highly coloured but strictly edited account of Colin Watts’ ‘break-in’, which stopped just short of hinting that me, Ceci and even Jesse Marlon and Pierre had all narrowly escaped sexual predation by the village rapist, and certainly did not extend to my lingering clinch with Jesse Marlon by the Aga.