Charlotte’s choice of fancy dress, however, hopes to appeal to the partygoers’ fondness for the elaborate prewar balls we used to attend. There was always fierce competition in some quarters to win the prize for the best costume. Rivalries ran for several seasons, with outfits becoming ever more elaborate and outlandish.

“Lilith, darling!” Charlotte, exquisitely turned out as Titania, complete with gossamer wings, floats over to us and embraces me in a flurry of chiffon and seed pearls. “You look simply divine, as always. Oh, Louis, it is beastly of you to look so heart-stopping when you are firmly engaged to the most beautiful woman in the room. What are the rest of us supposed to do?”

She leads us into the throng, through the foyer, and into the main room that is not quite a ballroom, more a modern dance hall, with a bar to one side. There is a small stage, where an energetic jazz band is playing loudly. Waiters in vaguely Middle Eastern costume of several centuries ago weave through the merrymakers, silver trays of mysterious cocktails and glasses of champagne held perilously high. Already I wish I were back in the calm of my own apartment. I do not feel like dancing or engaging in the idle chatter I am required to find interesting.

Louis senses my resistance and sends to me a little spell to evoke the smell of roses. As he had anticipated, it makes me smile.

“That’s better. Can’t have you glum so close to our wedding day. People will think you’ve gone off the idea of marrying me,” he says, pulling me through the melee. “Come on, let’s dance.”

“But, Louis, I don’t know this new one. I’ve no idea…”

“Nor have I. Let’s make it up as we go along, shall we?”

He holds me tightly, picking up the upbeat tempo, expertly guiding me through the other dancers as we invent something between a foxtrot and an as yet undiscovered sequence of steps. I can tell he is enjoying himself, and I don’t wish to spoil his evening. All around us the young and the not so young are dancing, laughing, and drinking with something akin to desperation. It is as if their very lives depend on their having a good time. As if the only way they can banish all the pain, all the loss, all the sadness of the war, is to fill each moment with wild enjoyment. But that very desperation is itself a kind of loss, as if they have misplaced the spontaneous, sincere happiness of old and replaced it with something contrived. Something that is only on the surface. Something pitiful.