‘I suppose that I have a sort of rarity value. Aunt Cuckoo from her villa in the South of France. Raffish old girl who once knew the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds and danced a tango in a restaurant with Isadora Duncan … faded glamour.’

Archie puffed his cigarette slowly. ‘Shouldn’t have thought that Harriet or one member of her family knew who any of those people were. Far too solid and dim, no sense of fantasy at all.’

Unlike you, she thought, can you really believe that cigarette is alight and that you are enjoying it? That’s fantasy all right. Ever since the very first scare about tobacco you’ve been ‘pretending’ to have your cigarette.

‘Harriet absolutely begged me. I simply couldn’t have not gone,’ she said.

Harriet had written, in her poky handwriting, across the Cartier invitation: ‘Know not a chance you’ll come. It’ll be a frightful scrum too, and couldn’t put you up, but wizard if you did, so just treat this as info.’

Harriet had never forgotten that she had risen to giddy heights in the WAAF in the war, and had secretly hoped that there would be another before she was too old to join up again. The hopes had long faded. So she ‘arranged’ instead.

‘Such a frightful expense,’ said Archie tapping invisible ash off his cigarette.

‘I didn’t cost you a penny! Stayed with Dottie, as you know, in the greatest discomfort, went “economy” and never entered a shop.’ She finished the wine, refilled her glass. Aware of his awareness. Not caring.

‘No. I didn’t mean you, my dear. The wedding. Nonsense. That girl will never stay the course. She’ll be off again after a long week-end. Not steady.’

‘She may. He’s attractive; in an Estate Agents or something. He’s quite grand and so are the Estate Agents. They both like horses, tennis and sheep-dog trials. And Caroline is twenty-seven, no chicken. Time she stayed put.’

‘Well, as long as it amused you.’

The only thing that amused me was Harriet’s face of blank astonishment when I arrived. Everything else bored me witless. But it was a heaven sent excuse to go, so I had to take it. ‘I like people, Archie dear, I like the gaiety and the fun and all that nonsense. I know you hate it, but I don’t. Just once in a while it does one good to get away; to keep in touch.’

‘You do plenty of that, I should have thought, here … all summer. The place is like an hotel.’

‘And no one bothers you, dear. You hide away in your museum … so don’t fuss about that.’

‘I do wish you wouldn’t call it a museum. Quite wrong. Study. My office if you like, but not a museum.’

She took another sandwich, sipped her wine. ‘Whatever you like. Have you done very much while I’ve been away?’