The first sign that the day was to prove unprecedentedly memorable came at the top of the stairs. Noel could hear someone snoring, and the snore grew louder as he descended, rising to a climax as he approached the drawing-room door, which was slightly ajar. Peering round, he saw Corporal O’Mahoney wrapped in a great-coat and lying on the ottoman, his stockinged feet projecting over the end, like planking on a builder’s van. A pair of muddy boots lay on Mattie’s favourite rug. Fastidiously, Noel removed them and then dropped each boot from waist height on to the stone floor beside the window seat. There was no break in the easy rhythm of the snoring.

The kitchen was empty, but someone had made tea and the pot was still warm. He poured himself a cup and stared broodingly out through the kitchen window. If, as he suspected, the American had come for Christmas lunch, then the small chicken would be utterly inadequate and Vee would just have to open the tin of corned beef she’d been saving since August. And the corporal needn’t think he’d be getting any of the white meat.

The fog was slowly shifting, no longer uniformly opaque; the bulky rectangle of the coal bunker emerged gradually from the soup and a flake of soot wandered past the window. The fruitcake, thought Noel. If he sliced the tombola fruitcake and served it with the blancmange and the tinned pears, there would, at least, be more than enough pudding for them all. Another flake of soot followed the first, and then a whole flurry of them, each minutely curled and fronded, almost feather-like. Or not just feather-like, he realized, with surprise; actual feathers.

He found Vee just outside the back door, muffled in coat and balaclava, plucking a turkey.

‘Happy Christmas,’ she said. ‘Look what arrived this morning.’

The turkey’s head jerked back and forth, ridiculously small by comparison with its body, the wattle like a pendulum.

‘What are we supposed to do with that?’ asked Noel.

‘Do with it?’ Vee glanced up, a tiny feather glued to the end of her nose. ‘Roast it, of course. How long since you’ve had a Christmas turkey?’

‘But that’ll take all day. And we have the chicken.’

‘And now we’ve got a turkey as well. Can’t we joint it? Mario drove nearly all the way to Norwich last night – he said he’d fetch us one, but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know for sure if he’d manage it.’

‘But if I’d known, we needn’t have killed Fleur.’

‘Who? Oh, the white one. But she hadn’t laid since September – you knew there was no point in keeping her. I’ve asked the corporal to lunch – after all, there’s going to be plenty.’ Her hand was moving automatically as she spoke, the dark feathers hanging in the air around her.

Noel turned away. He was not sentimental about the hens; on the other hand, Fleur (he had been reading The Forsyte Saga when she’d arrived) had seemed more characterful than the rest of the flock and his choice of cooking method had been, in a small way, a tribute to that.