‘You’ve not got a coat on,’ said Vee. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

‘Have you fed the hens?’ he asked. He could hear them crooning impatiently, the wiry scrape of their feet.

‘Not yet.’

Still coatless, he aimed through the fog towards the coop, and shovelled some fish meal through the flap on the side. ‘No,’ he said, in response to the commotion inside, ‘you can’t come out yet. Later, maybe.’ There was a hint of brightness overhead.

‘Have a look in the larder!’ called Vee. ‘You’ll never believe it. And your present’s on the dresser.’

When, ten minutes later, she brought in the turkey, now reduced to pimpled nakedness, Noel was already halfway through the first chapter of The History of European Architecture.

‘Thank you,’ he said, a little stiffly.

‘There wasn’t another one in Cullbright’s, but Mr Jepson found a copy in a shop in Wood Green,’ she said. ‘Are you pleased?’

‘Yes. And did you like yours?’ He had wrapped the talcum powder and left it outside her bedroom door.

‘I did, it’s a treat.’ She waved a wrist in his direction, and the smell of lavender cut through that of raw meat. ‘So, if you’ve stopped being cross, can we get this in the oven?’

‘I’m not cross.’

‘Did you see what else he brought? Did you see the little bags with tea in them? I cut the end off one, and there was nearly a spoon and a half in it, so I’m going to open them all and put the tea in the caddy – the only trouble is that it’s so fine it’ll go straight through the strainer, it’s like dust. I might see if I can cut up a stocking and use that instead. And the ham! Did you see the sliced ham? And the great big oranges!’

He had never heard her so animated. ‘They’re grapefruit,’ he said.

‘Are they?’

‘They’re grown in California and picked by itinerant workers from the Oklahoma dustbowl, as chronicled by John Steinbeck. People in the USA have them for breakfast.’

‘What do they taste like?’

‘I don’t actually know,’ said Noel, with reluctant curiosity.

‘We could have an American breakfast,’ said Vee. ‘That’d be a Christmas surprise for everybody, wouldn’t it?’

The corporal slept on. Only Dr Parry-Jones really enjoyed the grapefruit, and Vee had to remove the sugar bowl from the table after Mr Reddish had lunged for a third spoonful.

‘I’m assuming it’s not ripe,’ he said. ‘I once had to help a young lady in the street – she’d eaten a very sour lime and had developed the most terrible muscle shudders, and I had to give her my arm to the nearest Tube station.’

‘Muscle shudders?’ repeated Dr Parry-Jones, arrested in the act of raising a tea cup to her mouth. ‘Spasms, you mean? Or was it fasciculation? Though I can think of no link between unripe fruit and either of those.’

‘Perhaps she’d been dipping it in gin,’ suggested Miss Appleby.