‘You might well find a job that was challenging and fulfilling. You might rise to be the CEO of ICI or the Director General of the BBC or even editor of Vogue. But there will always be others who could do the job as well as you. There is no one else who can be Tatty’s mother.’

Tessa looks uncertain. ICI and the BBC, perhaps, but editor of Vogue?

Jomier reads her thoughts but does not want to get bogged down with detail. ‘We live in an age . . .’ he goes on – but then falters. He wants to attack feminism that has freed women to be wage slaves, neglect their children and let men off the leash. He knows it will not work. Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Virginia Woolf, Betty Friedan, Sylvia Plath – these are the saints in the pantheon of the modern woman. Tessa may have a degree from Oxford in Politics and Economics but she is a child of her time. Anti-feminism is a symptom of misogyny and misogyny is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Tessa fills the silence created by Jomier’s hesitation, telling Jomier that she is ashamed of her dissatisfaction because she knows that her life is not bad as lives go. Jomier listens and commiserates and does not think less of her for the whinging leitmotif. Even if a life is free of major aggravations – cancer, poverty, a drunken husband, a sick child – there are plenty of minor ones about which to complain – stepping on dog shit, a broken-down gas boiler, a parking ticket. Women are genetically programmed to complain after generations of being dependent upon men. From the Stone Age to the 1950s, a wife depended upon her husband to get things done – hence the instinct to manipulate by mood. Sulks are the stick: sweet smiles are the carrot. If you want sex, put me in the mood for sex – a pearl necklace, a candlelit dinner, a weekend in Paris – first class on Eurostar, a suite at the Ritz; or, among the financially challenged, a suite of a different kind – a three-piece suite in cream leather from Leather World, or a week on the Costa del Sol, or new shelves in the lounge – SEX bartered for DIY.