Henry Jomier is a good son. He treats his father politely but thinks he is a loser. Henry has friends whose fathers are also barristers but all are either High Court judges or QCs. Jomier applied three times to the Lord Chancellor’s Office to be made a QC and all three of his applications were rejected. Henry tells his father that if he had been black or Asian or female his application would have succeeded. Yet Henry’s friends’ fathers who are High Court judges or QCs are not black or Asian or female but plummy members of the English upper class. What Henry means is that if Jomier had been black or Asian or female his mediocrity might have been overlooked. Jomier does not have a first-class mind. The Lord Chancellor knows it. Jomier knows it. Henry knows it. His father is a loser but you cannot divorce a father so you make the best of it. And Henry does make the best of it. He rings his father every now and then to make sure he is OK. He asks him to Sunday lunch every month or six weeks. There are no other guests. Just the children. Tilly and Max are asked to dinner parties by Henry and Sandra. Henry feels more at ease with his mother. They share the same values. And Max is a figure in the City. Henry’s friends are impressed.

Jomier feels a pang of anguish when he thinks of his daughter Louisa. She lives in Argentina. It is as if she is dead. She is married to an Anglo-Argentinian with an apartment in Buenos Aires and an estancia in Corrientes. Jomier loathes his son-in-law Jaime as much as he loves his daughter: the opposing emotions are in perfect equilibrium. Jaime is called Jimmy by his mother and father, his five siblings, twenty-three cousins and his Argentinian friends. The Anglo-Saxon diminutive is to remind the world that he has Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. But there is not much: Jomier estimates that it is no more than a quarter. He is three-quarters Argentinian, which means mostly Italian since 60 per cent of the immigrants to Argentina came from Italy, shedding everything fine as they crossed the Atlantic – their culture, their cuisine – retaining only their mafiosi vendettas and taste for posturing dictators – Mussolini, Perón.

Jimmy is tall. That, perhaps, comes from his Anglo-Saxon genes; or perhaps just a diet of flat meat. He is also thick-set and strong. When he greets Jomier he slaps him on the back. A heavy blow lands on Jomier’s shoulder blade; a sing-song greeting is bellowed in his ear. There are many things that Jomier dislikes about his son-in-law: his crass materialism, his snobbery, his contempt for the poor, for losers (like Jomier); but most of all Jomier hates his Chiquita-banana accent. And the venom has spread to anything South American – salsa, the tango, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Che Guevara.