‘Such a vulgar term,’ said Lady Helena.

Caroline caught my eye and mouthed fuck-buddies behind her mum’s back.

Magic was what drew them together. They spent the summer of ’66 breaking the bank in Monte Carlo and then wintered in Tangiers spending the proceeds. All the time teaching each other magic and refining their technique.

‘And having spectacular sex on the roof,’ said Lady Helena. ‘With Chris Farlowe and Procol Harum on the radio.’

Caroline winced.

They arrived back in London on a grey day in October ’67 and found everything had changed.

‘You could practically feel it oozing out of the stones,’ said Lady Helena. ‘And there were new faces in the old haunts. It wasn’t the London we’d known; it felt dangerous, alienating. At least that’s how I felt.’

Albert Woodville-Gentle seemed to find it more agreeable.

‘By that time I’d already set my sights on India,’ she said and off she went, although via BOAC rather than the hippy trail. ‘I studied at an ashram, got myself a guru or two.’ But she couldn’t find an indigenous magic tradition. ‘Although I got the strong sense that there was something going on under the surface. I didn’t know about the Rivers in those days, or I might have looked in somewhat different areas. They knew about your lot, though,’ she nodded at Nightingale. ‘I’m not sure you left a good impression in India.’

‘So you didn’t find what you were looking for?’ asked Nightingale.

‘Yes and no,’ said Helena. ‘I never found an Indian magical tradition, at least not one based on what we might understand as magic.’ But she did find a vocation, a sense of purpose, in the slums of Calcutta.

‘Unless you’ve been there you can’t believe what it’s like,’ she said. ‘That vast press of humanity crowding in from all sides, the noise, the colour, the chaos, the smells and the pain, the suffering. If you plan to stay you either hide behind walls or you roll up your sleeves and try to help.’

She helped set up a free clinic in a poverty stricken suburb and there she found a use for the magical techniques that her mother had developed in Africa. ‘At first I kept it simple,’ she said. ‘Broken bones and physical injuries, but in Paikpara that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You could work yourself to death just dealing with the diarrheal conditions.’ And she wanted to, because these were things that were killing the kids. But the real problem was poor sanitation and poverty.

‘There was nothing I could do about either, but I thought I might be able to do something about leprosy,’ she said and I almost dropped my second slice of Bakewell tart.

‘Did you?’ I asked, which got me a frown from Nightingale.