I return to the playroom and announce that the children can watch half a DVD and no more than half while Mum and Dad have supper, and that Ana would be babysitting the next night, as we were going to the opera. Which we are, even if it is only Godminster Opera’s production of Don Pasquale by Donizetti in Godminster Hall, a privilege that Ralph would shell out serious money to avoid but is – not that he knows this yet – forking out £100 to attend in Black Tie.

Mirabel actually looks at me as if she might, for once, be impressed.

‘Mum, no shit!’ she says. ‘Really? Wow!’ and she starts hammering the news to seximonki14.

‘But I didn’t think you were interested in opera or ballet, darling,’ I say, so pleased I don’t tick her off for ‘no shit’. Then I move in to peek over her shoulder.

‘Hey, get this,’ she is writing. ‘You know my mum? You know I said she was, like, sad, and really old, and never goes out? And my dad thinks that Bart Simpson is, like, a baronet or a duke or something? Well, get this! They’re going on Oprah!!!’

I have made a really nice supper, fish pie and spinach, and we are now on to the Somerset Camembert. I only have a glass –maybe a glass and a half, tops – but as usual now the red wine tastes bitter in my mouth, of course. Metallic, and vinegary. Ralph looks well, bronzed and weatherbeaten and blue-eyed after our long walk on Hamble Hill on Sunday, and I am thinking how good-looking he is and how lucky I am when he starts sneaking a hand towards a copy of this month’s Angler which he’d brought with him from his study, in case there was a lull in proceedings.

So I think, come on, Mimi. Better strike before husband loses himself in some blurry brown photographs of underwater carp or becomes too engrossed in a long piece about the joys of light tackle. I don’t want to have this talk in bed, when we are too zonked by our daily overdose of pure unpolluted Dorset air –it’s like Xanax – and, in my case, raging hormones, actually to speak to each other.

‘Darling, you know I’ve been feeling even more tired than usual–’ I begin, in a pleasant, conversational voice, as I clear, but leaving the Camembert and the wine.

‘For someone who doesn’t work, you’re always tired, you must be ill,’ he jumps in, immediately. ‘You know, I think you should see the doctor.’

So I say, hurt and surprised, ‘That’s funny because I did. Did see the doctor.’