Jomier has two children. A son and a daughter. Jomier’s son Henry is now thirty-seven. He works in the City and by Jomier’s standards is a rich man. Henry does not think he is rich because so many of his friends are richer still. Henry pays interest on a mortgage of half a million pounds. This represents 70 per cent of the value of the purchase price of his house in Queen’s Park. The house is now worth twice the amount he paid for it but this brings little comfort to Henry whose friends’ houses in Notting Hill have tripled, even quadrupled in value. Henry is a partner in an investment bank. He hopes one day to earn enough money to buy a house in Notting Hill. And a cottage in Dorset. But he must also pay the salary of a nanny and fees at private schools. Jomier fears that the high-flying Henry may, like his father and grandfather before him, never quite reach the sun. The Jomier gene: mediocrity triggered in middle age.

Henry’s wife is called Sandra. This embarrasses Jomier because it reminds him of the other Sandra who in most ways is identical to the Sandra who is married to his son. She is a corporate lawyer and goes off to an office in Holborn every morning, catching a Bakerloo Line train at Queen’s Park. Their two children are left in the charge of Tracey, the Australian nanny, and Alena, the Slovakian au pair. Jomier’s five-year-old granddaughter Samantha speaks English with a bizarre accent – half Danube basin, half Great Barrier Reef.