‘People were still arriving by boat in those days,’ I said.

‘But Mum probably didn’t want to get the boat,’ Ruby said. ‘She’d already been to Australia on the boat and, anyway, she loves to fly!’

I’m tempted to say that God alone knows what it would have cost, but Google gives you a fair idea: a flight between Perth and London in the 1950s involved five stops, including two overnight in Singapore and either Karachi or Tripoli, and the fare was three times the average annual salary.

‘There are photographs of Mum and Dad on that trip,’ Ruby said, ‘and one in particular I remember: Mum in a one-piece bathing suit, sitting by some hotel pool, wearing cat’s eye sunglasses. You can’t really tell that she’s pregnant.’

I couldn’t help wondering what John Moore’s folks made of the idea that he was coming back to London with a girl he’d met in Australia, who was already expecting their heir, but when I put that question to Ruby, she laughed.

‘I know, I know, we Brits can be a bit funny when it comes to class!’ she said. ‘I have wondered what Granny Moore made of it, but then Mum was pregnant so the main thing was to get her married to Dad as quickly as possible!’

I said, ‘How did your mum cope with all that class business? Strikes me she’d have taken it in her stride.’

Ruby said, ‘Mum will tell you . . . she’s never had any problem “pretending to be posh” as she puts it. Granny Moore is dead now, but basically everyone got on.’

We had ordered grilled fish, and as it arrived I asked Ruby whether her mum ever went back to work after Steven – and then Ruby herself – was born. She shook her head. ‘She didn’t, no. She was lucky, in that she didn’t have to work. Dad went into business, making and delivering shipping containers, and they bought a house at Bucklebury.

‘Obviously Mum wasn’t scared of hard work. I mean, we all know that taking care of little children is work, but the point is, she was perfectly happy to be at home with us. We had stables, with horses. I think she quite liked playing lady of the manor, even if she did it tongue-in-cheek.’

It was tender territory, so I stepped cautiously into my next question. ‘Do you know how your mum was feeling about coming back to Australia for this visit, Ruby? How she felt about having to come to meet her sister, I mean?’

Ruby said, ‘Oh, she was fine! My boy, Rocco, he was a mess but Mum was fine! Rocco has always made a point of studying everything about Australia, knowing that his granny grew up here, and he can tell you, Australia has nine of the world’s top ten most poisonous snakes, or six of the most poisonous spiders or whatever it is.

‘His vision of the place is obviously of some wild land with all these dangerous animals, so when we went to Heathrow to see Mum off, he was hanging onto her hand, very anxiously, and he was saying, “Remember not to go swimming with sharks, Granny, and don’t step on any snakes, and don’t touch any spiders,” like those were the kind of things that Mum might do!