Your Place Or Mine? was only mildly shocking, but to a girl from a sheltered background it seemed deliciously risqué. Afterwards they walked to a nearby restaurant, Catalina blissfully remembering tunes and jokes from the show.

‘Sebastian would be so cross if he knew where I’d been tonight,’ she said cheerfully as they sat waiting for their food.

‘I can’t imagine why you agreed to marry him if you dislike him so much.’

‘I was sixteen. What did I know? Maggie, when you live in a convent boarding school with nuns saying, “Don’t do this,” and “Don’t do that,” you will agree to anything to get out.

‘And along comes this old man-OK, OK, middle-aged man-who was a friend of your Papa-also he is your distant cousin, third or fourth, I forget. But Sebastian is the head of the family, so when your Papa die this man is your guardian. And he say he has decided you will make him a suitable wife.’

‘He has decided?’

‘He is a decisive man. It is his way.’

‘What about what you want?’

‘He says I’m too young to know what I want.’

Maggie appealed to heaven. ‘Give me patience!’

‘Anyway, you say yes, because if you don’t get out of that school you will scream,’ Catalina explained, adding with a big sigh, ‘but he’s much worse than the nuns. A girl should go to her wedding joyfully, full of adoration for her groom. How can I adore Sebastian?’

‘Since I’ve never met him, I don’t know whether he’s adorable or not,’ Maggie pointed out.

‘He is not,’ Catalina said firmly. ‘He is a grandee, an aristocrat. He is proud, fierce, haughty, imperious. He demands everything and he forgives nothing. He believes that only honour matters, for himself, for his family. He is impressive. But adorable-no!’

‘Well, adoration is fine for the wedding day,’ Maggie observed. ‘But a marriage needs to be built on reality.’ She poured them both a glass of the light wine she had ordered.