‘Buggery may, of course, be the answer,’ says Molly, dabbing daintily at her lips, staining her old-fashioned damask napkin with deep sticky pink. ‘For satisfaction. After a certain age. Have you ever been buggered, Stephen? No? Have you, Hattie? I never have, and it’s too late now, I suppose. Is it the fashion, these days? One seems to read a lot about it. It wasn’t done, when I was young. Is buggery in, Stephen?’

She looks at him, demanding a response, but he is unable to answer, for the invitation in her eyes is too alarming. But Hattie careers on, unstoppable, taking this fence in her stride, the bit between her teeth.

‘But of course!’ she cries. ‘Of course! Many, many times! Orlando always preferred it! But then that was because he had such a tiny prick. And he wasn’t much good at buggery either!’

In vino veritas. She spoke the simple truth. And as she spoke, she suddenly unzipped the back of her gold dress, and let it fall forward from the waist over her turquoise-rimmed gold-plate and debris of cheese and biscuits. She sat there, topless, her excellent firm breasts eloquent over the Camembert. Stephen and Molly stared at them. Molly’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Yes,’ said Hattie, in a high-rhetorical trance, gazing into space like a priestess. ‘Yes, buggered, poked, screwed, raped, you name it, I’ve had it, and was it ever, ever enough, any of it? No, it was not,’ said Hattie. ‘It was never enough. It will never be enough. Never!’

Defiance blared from her nostrils, and she was breathing quickly and noisily, as though she had been running or violently making love. Her face was flushed with passion. She looked wonderful. She looked appalling. Stephen was frightened out of his wits. At any moment a breeze might blow upon her and she would turn grey and fall apart and crumble into ash before his eyes. This too too solid, this too too vibrant flesh would melt. Molly had already melted. Hattie hung on there, panting. Molly Lansdowne blew her nose, firmly, on a lace-edged handkerchief plucked from her own bosom, took another gulp of gin and water, reassembled her features, and heroically took charge.

‘There, there, my dear,’ she said, in her droll social voice. ‘You’d better fasten yourself up again, Hattie darling. You can’t go to Marjorie’s looking like that.’ She paused, and gallantly added, ‘Unfortunately.’