But, much as she loved him, Poppy still felt that she was walking on eggshells around her husband.

‘Hey, guys,’ trilled Eleanor, approaching them with a silver tray clinking with glasses. Poppy and Damian looked up expectantly. Ellie was wearing a supremely chic Ralph Lauren navy-blue strapless swimsuit underneath a man’s white cotton shirt with the sleeves pushed back. Her light brown hair was held back from her face with expensive-looking but logo-free tortoiseshell sunglasses.

‘Oooh, I was just thinking it was probably time for a drink,’ said Poppy, as it was already two p.m. and normal drinking rules didn’t really apply when you were on holiday. Freshly squeezed red grapefruit juice had been the order of the day with brunch, a couple of hours earlier.

‘Poppy!’ Ellie laughed, faux-reproachfully. ‘I have made a selection of iced ’erbal teas. You don’t really want to be drinking alcohol before sunset, now do you?’

‘Oh, no, of course not.’ Poppy caught Damian’s eye, and tried not to giggle. ‘What I meant was that I’m just really, really thirsty. Gosh, those iced teas look delicious.’

And actually they did. Ellie had gone to the trouble of putting the tall glasses in the freezer, so they had a pleasingly frosty appearance, and decorating each of them with an appropriate garnish: crystallized rose petals and rosehips for the pale pinks; mint and basil leaves for the pale greens; camomile flowers and lemon peel for the pale yellows.

‘Yes, they do,’ said Damian, smiling at his hostess. ‘You really shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, Ellie.’

‘Oh, that’s OK, I love doing things like this.’ Ellie smiled sweetly back. ‘It keeps me out of mischief, y’know?’

Poppy and Damian both laughed.

At that moment, Poppy nearly jumped out of her skin as something very cold and very sticky landed – splat! – on her flat brown tummy. Looking up, she saw Hammond – Marty and Ellie’s son – grinning evilly from the balcony above, an empty bowl clutched in his sticky little hand. As the dairy-free, sugar-free ‘ice cream’ melted into her belly button, Poppy realized she couldn’t get up without making the most god-awful mess over the pristine decking. She smiled at Ellie through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Poppy. Accidents will happen. You just wait there while I go fetch a cloth, then you can go freshen up. Hammy, honey,’ she cooed up at the balcony. ‘Don’t you worry, baby. Mommy will bring you some more ice cream right away.’ And she half ran back inside her lovely, airy house.

‘Accidents, my arse,’ said Damian under his breath, and Poppy smiled at him in a moment of pure complicity. Hammy was an absolute little monster. After suffering so many miscarriages, Ellie could deny her longed-for only child nothing, while Marty’s feeble attempts at discipline had resulted in tantrums on such a whopping scale that he had pretty much given up after the third or fourth time.

‘How comfortable are you now, on a scale of one to ten?’ Damian asked Poppy.