At about the same time, Lucilla began to blag the occasional celebrity interview, the proceeds of which she squandered on new clothes for both of them: for her, little patterned sundresses and great clunky shoes; for Chester, Paul Smith safari suits and gut-tight rollnecks.

Thus refashioned, they went to drinks parties in Hampstead and Notting Hill, and instead of rooting himself, as he previously would have, by the buffet table, Chester mingled. At first he felt dreadfully adrift and vulnerable among the yakking shoals of writers and consultants. But he realized quite quickly that their conversation was mainly burnished gossip and routine innuendo, and that the people he had feared or despised were, depressingly perhaps, no more or less competent or entertaining than he was himself.