Giving into the thick humidity, I plopped into the nearest deckchair, half wondering if Melissa had actually done a runner.

She didn’t seem herself at the moment, I’d begun to notice – scatty where she was normally efficient, becoming more unreliable about meeting up – but I couldn’t put my finger on the root cause.

Hopefully, this weekend would be a chance to talk properly. Later.

Now, though, I shut my stinging eyes – just for a moment.

The hunter’s horn blared in the distance as, naked, I rode a great black horse through the forest, long glossy hair winding around me and a mysterious figure beckoning through the trees.

I woke with a start, dribbling slightly, to see a huge white beast creeping its way through the trees towards our campsite.

At least, I saw, peering down urgently, I was still fully clothed.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ Nella, waving from the driver’s seat of a gleaming 4x4, daughter Willow sitting very upright beside her and another woman in the back – squashed in beside half of Waitrose, by the looks of it. ‘So sorry we’re late.’

‘Just in time to find everything set up, oh dear one,’ Marcus muttered, staggering past with a pile of firewood. He caught my eye and grinned.

‘Can I help?’ I tried to look as if I was about to jump up.

‘God, no. You look like you need a rest. Stay right there.’

My mood shifted up a miniscule gear – only to drop again as, beneath the flowering oak, Nella jumped out of the car in very short shorts and sparkly, no doubt ethical, trainers, shapely legs tanned to a perfect butterscotch in the dappled woodland light.

‘Hi!’ I pushed myself up from the deckchair as fluidly as I could – which wasn’t very. ‘Nice to see you.’

‘Let’s get this party started, people.’ Nella punched the air like a cheerleader. ‘Come on!’

Why had Marcus said I needed a rest? I wondered, noting Nella’s shining hair and skin. Did I look as terrible and limp as I felt?

‘I’ve got a little surprise for you all later. And here’s my oldest friend.’ A woman with bouncy red curls opened the back door. ‘Rebekah with a K.’

‘Less of the oldest, thanks very much, and more of the bestest.’ Rebekah wagged a tiny Hobbit finger at Nella and laughed like a sink emptying. ‘Nella with a P!’

The tiniest little Hobbit hands I’d ever seen, in fact.

‘My other half’s in Barbados for a few months, overseeing a build. Zzzz!’ She mimed a stagey yawn. ‘I’m stuck here cos of Mama’s illness. So it’s just me, I’m afraid. I’ve got some fabby ideas for the party though.’

How I hated the expression ‘other half’. Couldn’t we be both whole and alone?

‘Nothing wrong with being single for a bit, is there, Rudi?’

Freud might say the fact Nella refuses to remember your name correctly is no accident.

‘Just plain Ruby!’ I smiled fixedly at Hobbit-hands. ‘Nella with a P?’