The doorbell rang and I triggered the counterweight mechanism that causes the doors to swing open impressively on their own – well, it impressed me once. They opened to reveal Lady Helena waiting with a half-smile on her lips. She’d deeply invested in the ageing bohemian look, with a quilted burgundy jacket and corduroy slacks. Her daughter was dressed in a conservative navy skirt suit that fitted her tall frame too well to be anything but bespoke.

Apart from my mum and certain senior aunts and uncles, I don’t do deference as a rule. And certainly not to inherited titles. But I also believe in making people comfortable enough to make mistakes, so I smiled and called her Lady Helena.

I noticed that she didn’t tell me to call her ‘just Helena please’.

I invited them inside and let the doors close behind them.

Lady Helena paused in front of the statue of Sir Isaac Newton and read the inscription.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;

God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.

‘“I do not know what I may appear to the world”,’ she said and I recognised the quote, ‘“but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore”.’ She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. ‘Where would be without the “great men” of history to guide us.’ And with that she swept, unprompted, into the atrium.

I caught Caroline’s gaze and she rolled her eyes.

We use the atrium for afternoon tea because Molly won’t let us use the breakfast room for anything but breakfast, and the main dining hall is, despite having a high ceiling decorated with a fine Enlightenment mural of Newton bringing light to the world, actually a bit dingy.

Still, the green leather armchairs had been artfully rearranged so that the comfy one with the severe cracking on the armrests was not amongst those arrayed in a loose u-shape around a couple of walnut coffee tables. I noticed that both the table tops and the green leather gleamed and there was a definite lingering smell of polish.

The silver tea service, which I’d only ever seen decorating a dresser in the small dining room, was assembled upon those coffee tables. On the service were a selection of biscuits, cakes and iced delights in pink and yellow. Enough, I was to learn much later, to make a Swedish housewife proud. Molly had been baking all night and in such quantity that Toby had fallen into a diabetic coma around dawn and was currently lying in the kitchen with his legs in the air.

Nightingale had stood as the women entered and he waved them towards the chairs. I’d been hoping that Molly would suddenly materialise behind them, but instead she came gliding in from the direction of the kitchen stairs bearing a silver tray and a squarish art deco teapot in white china with gold trim.