‘It’s an invisibility cloak, actually,’ he said with a hurt air.

‘He’s mad about those ridiculous children’s books everybody seems to be reading on overcrowded trains,’ she explained later. ‘And he talks of something called “wackybaccy”… Poor souls. Is that some sort of spell?’

Payne cleared his throat. ‘Not quite.’

Provost, it turned out, was what was known as a ‘single parent’. Lady Grylls pronounced the phrase slowly and doubtfully as though it belonged to some foreign tongue. She went on to explain that Mrs Provost – Shirley – had also been in her employment, but she had left her husband six months earlier – for a black man, a bouncer called C.C.J. Hawkshaw, with whom she now lived in London’s Docklands.

‘They came on a visit last month. They meant well, no hard feelings and all that, but it was a mistake. Provost has clearly neither forgotten nor forgiven. He walked about handing round drinks, saying nothing, looking shell-shocked – acted as though he had no idea who they were. The boy ran off and shut himself in the potting shed and wouldn’t come out. I think I smelled pot, but I may be wrong. Nicholas did behave oddly afterwards. Poor souls,’ Lady Grylls said again.

‘Why don’t you raise their wages, if you pity them so much?’ Major Payne said as he stirred his tea.

‘Can’t afford to. Shirley was unrecognizable. She’s shaved her head and she and C.C.J. sported identical tattoos on their arms. It was fairly obvious she was preggers as well,’ Lady Grylls went on. ‘We always got on well – sex-mad, of course – and I thought her new consort a pet. His full name is Clive Junior, but for some reason he hates being called that. He wouldn’t say what the second C stands for either. He’s terribly sensitive about it.’