TPR and his sister SG had broken off from our main party to take seats in the hotel’s poshest bar. When I spotted them they were working their way through an elaborate Champagne tasting tray, the most expensive item on the drinks menu. Their attempts to avoid my eye were pointless. I had found them and I demanded to know what was going on.

TPR budged uncomfortably in his seat as he explained that the news to follow was really the responsibility of his sister. She smiled sweetly, but failed to pass on any information. In the time that I waited for her to speak twenty wounded soldiers on stretchers were carried past us on their way to hospital.

Finally the confession was made. TPR was having an affair.

Not long afterwards TPR annoyed me further when on a visit to P and S he revealed that he had only packed for himself. I was thus left to join that evening’s party in a scruffy thin bleach-marked cotton summer dress – unless I was prepared to beg a loaned outfit from EF.