A certain degree of negotiation was clearly in store for the girl and her mother. Who was she, anyway?

As if I had voiced the question aloud, she thrust the ivory holder into her pocket and stuck out her hand. “Sorry, I’m being rude. I’m Sybil Goodheart. Everyone calls me Sunny.”

“Mary Russell,” I offered in return.

“And of course, you’re just joking about not going to the ball. I’m so bad, I never can tell when someone’s pulling my leg. What are you going as?”

I gave up; the child was too persistent for me. “Perhaps I’ll just wear my pyjamas and go as the downstairs neighbour, come to complain.”

She clapped her hand across her mouth and giggled, blushing slightly, perhaps at the idea of a proper lady coming in her nightwear. For a Flapper, she was easily shocked.

“You’re an American,” I said. If the accent hadn’t told me, the brashness would have.

“From Chicago. You ever been there?”

“I passed through once, when I was young.”

“It’s got to be the world’s stinkiest city,” she declared. “What’re you going to India for?”

“Er, my husband and I have business there.” Impossible to give the deflating retort a proper Englishwoman would have wielded at the importunity of the question; poor Sunny would have gone behind the clouds.

“Is that nifty old—er, older man your husband?” she asked in astonishment. “I mean to say, Mama and I noticed him earlier when you were on the deck.”

“That is my husband, yes,” I told her. And if she delivered a third rudeness, I would smack her. Verbally, of course. “And you, why are you going out?”

“I’m a little late for the ‘fishing fleet,’ aren’t I?” she said with a most disarming grin. “Actually, we had meant to come out in October, but Mama had a message from the spirits saying it was inauspicious, so we waited, which in the end was fantabulous, because I got to meet Ivor Novello at a party in London.”

“‘The spirits,’ ” I repeated carefully.

Sunny inclined her head towards me and confided, “Hokum, isn’t it? But Mama has had some powerful experiences in her time, and who’s to argue? That is to say, I did argue at the time, because who wants to come all the way here and have to skedaddle away after a few weeks as soon as the weather gets hot? But Mama chose her time, and we will at least have a month to sight-see before we go to see her Teacher.”

There was no mistaking the capital letter on the noun. Knowing I was going to regret it, I asked her which teacher that was.