‘What is wrong with you all?’ asked the ghost when she pulled up outside their house, turning from one to the other with an expression on her face that suggested she felt nothing but contempt for them. ‘How on earth have you allowed yourselves to turn into these types of people?’

At which point, each of their phones started beeping with notifications of how their adventures were becoming the talk of social media and the pile-on began.

The newspapers, of course, had a field day with it and the stories ran for weeks, the Cleverleys becoming the butt of jokes on all the television and radio panel shows, and while the CPS had ultimately decided not to pursue a prosecution on four of them – Achilles, the only true criminal mastermind among them, was to undertake two hundred hours of community service – their names were mud and they had, as a family, in Elizabeth’s words, been cancelled.

‘Possibly the most cancelled family in the history of the world,’ she’d added, feeling a certain pleasure that they had at least trended on every social media platform during their public disgrace. ‘Worse than the Borgias. Worse than the Trumps, for pity’s sake.’

In the end, it had been George’s idea to come to this most remote region of the United Kingdom, one of the only places left in the country that did not have access to Wi-Fi, and spend some time recuperating from their traumatic experiences. To have no phone or laptop was providing a digital detox that was proving a heavenly experience. Indeed, there was a part of him that was beginning to wonder whether he could move here for ever, grow a long beard and learn Gaelic to converse with the half-dozen or so wildlings that he occasionally encountered on his walks. He’d spent his entire life climbing the greasy pole of the television industry but realized now that he didn’t care if he ever saw Portland Place again. Here was bliss.

‘How’s the book coming along?’ asks Beverley, stepping outside to join him and handing him a gin and tonic as she sits down, sipping on her own. She leans across and they kiss briefly. To their mutual surprise, romance has been revived between them in this most desolate of places and they’ve come to realize that they might not have much in the world any more, but they still have each other. And ten million quid in the bank, of course.

‘It’s very interesting,’ he says. ‘Although, obviously, I’m reading it for ironic reasons.’

She smiles, glancing at the front cover. There was a time in her life when her husband had been able to amuse her like this regularly and it seems that that time has returned. Sitting together like this, outside in the fresh air, looking across the sea, they find themselves chatting as amiably as they did when they were a young couple, but it’s a relief to be simply living in the present. They can sit here for hours, exchanging small snippets of conversation or just saying nothing at all, and she feels closer to him than she has in years. It’s come as something of a delight to both of them to realize that they still love each other.