Latin – the language of anatomy and Catholicism. Why, after all these years, is Jomier unable to expunge the anatomical, the gynaecological, the venereal from his mind? He looks across the room at Tilly. She is stooping over Ned to persuade him to pass the parcel now that the music has resumed. Her figure remains slim; she makes the best of herself; she is well preserved – not mutton dressed as lamb but chic mutton in expensive smart-casual clothes. The skin is taut over her cheekbones but loose at her neck. There are wrinkles – no Botox – but the natural silver of her hair is streaked with gold. She is an elegant, handsome woman d’un certain age – dressed no longer to attract the male of the species but to appear as much in place in Kensington and Knightsbridge as she would be out of place on the Goldhawk Road.

Jomier thinks back thirty years to the time when they were giving children’s parties for Henry and Louisa. Tilly had been softer, more easily amused, but always distracted by the toddlers’ harassment and tired after broken nights. Less confident. Easton, the expensive analyst, and Maureen, the cheaper marriage counsellor, had both tentatively suggested that Tilly’s initial attraction to Jomier had been because he was a confident, masterful, slightly older man. Her father’s failings – drunk, depressed – had led her to seek an ersatz father as a mate. But the qualities that had appealed to her psyche as they set sail had grown less appealing as the voyage progressed. Confident became know-all. Masterful became bossy. Jomier’s fastidious compulsion to keep everything shipshape had come up against the laziness of his crew. There had been misunderstandings from the very start. Jomier had assumed that his wife would make his breakfast and straighten the duvet on the marital bed. Tilly had grown up with servants: such things were done by others. She did not see herself as a member of the crew but as a passenger travelling first class. If they had lived together before they had married, these misunderstandings might have been resolved. But would it have meant that they would have chosen not to marry? No. They were in love.

Tilly picks up the paper torn from the parcel by the little fingers of covetous children. Tessa’s Tatty has won the prize – a bejewelled plastic Princess made in China. Tilly takes the paper to the recycling bin. Tilly is no longer lazy. She now has servants in both her homes, and Henry and Sandra have Alena and Tracey; but Tilly has learned that even the grandest women now muck in. There are limits, of course: dusting, vacuum cleaning, cleaning lavatories with bristly brushes – she was not born for that!