‘Splendid!’

‘But not enough rain to swell them. I water them from the well. But we need rain.’

He crunched past the house towards the kitchens. She remained at the rail, looking across the garden, smiling gently. ‘I’m as deep as a well,’ she had said, ‘and you fear the water at the bottom might be muddy.’ Archie had moved away. ‘Never cared for mud,’ he had said.

She laughed aloud, a small, caught sound, and turning from the balcony started to undo the buttons of her silk shirt as she went back into her room. On a small Sheraton card-table, under a Beardsley drawing of a black page-boy dressed only in a turban and earrings, three bottles on a silver tray. She opened the vodka and poured herself a half glass, and shrugging one arm out of her shirt carried the drink into her bedroom, where she drank half of it straight down and then sat on the edge of her bed, catching her breath, letting a solitary tear spill down her cheek and run slowly into the corner of her mouth. For moments she sat staring blankly ahead, seeing nothing but the ugliness of the waiting-room. The black marble fireplace, the grey net curtains at the windows, a table in the middle of the room stacked with tidy piles of thumbed, out-of-date magazines, Punch, Woman’s Journal, Country Life. Matched chairs in maroon leatherette standing round the oatmeal walls, the uneasy silence broken by the whispering tick-tock of a tarnished brass clock on the veined marble mantelshelf standing between a copper jug of dried honesty and a signed, sepia photograph of the Princess Royal.

An odour of dust and methylated spirits. The sudden crack of the door hinges, and the soft rustle of the receptionist’s overall.

A sharp nose, pink-rimmed glasses, hair in a net. ‘Would you care to come along now, Lady Peverill? Haven’t we had a lovely day today.’

The best day of my life, I’d say. The best bloody day of my life. That was the best.

She swallowed the rest of the vodka, turned the glass upside down, let it fall to the smooth sheets and roll softly to the end of the bed.

All done. All finished. She pulled her arm from the other sleeve and let the silk shirt spill to the floor at her feet. No picnic this summer. We won’t have any picnic this year. All done. All finished. Oh shit! Oh shit! Slowly she lay down on her side, pressed her face deep into the pillow, hands tight to her mouth, and allowed herself the extreme indulgence of weeping in hopeless despair, for the first time.