`Well, I got your letter at last.' Petronius liked to approach a difficult subject by the winding, scenic route.

`What letter?'

`The one telling me you were a father.'

`What?'

`Three months to find me – not bad:'

When Helena and I and the new baby sailed back to Rome from Tarraconensis recently it only took eight days at sea and a couple more travelling gently from Ostia. `That's not possible.'

`You addressed it to me at the station house,' Petronius complained. `It was passed around the clerks for weeks, then when they decided to hand it over, naturally I,, wasn't there.' He was laying it on with a mortar trowel – a certain sign of stress.

`I thought it would be safer sent to the vigiles. I didn't know you would have got yourself suspended,' I reminded him. He was not in the mood for logic.

Nobody much was about. For most of the afternoon we had skulked here virtually in private. I was hoping that my sisters and their children, whom Helena and I had invited for lunch in order to introduce them all to our new daughter in one go, would go home. When Petro and I had sneaked out not one of the guests had been showing any sign of leaving. Helena had already looked tired. I should have stayed.

Her own family had had the tact not to come, but had invited us to dinner later in the week. One of her brothers, the one I could tolerate, had brought a message in which his noble parents politely declined our offer of sharing a cold collation with my swarming relatives in our tiny half furnished apartment. Some of my lot had already tried to sell the illustrious Camilli dud works of art that they couldn't afford and didn't want. Most of my family were offensive and all of them lacked tact. You couldn't hope to find a bigger crowd of loud, self-opinionated, squabbling idiots anywhere. Thanks to my sisters all marrying down I stood no chance of impressing Helena's socially superior crew. In any case, the Camilli didn't want to be impressed.