“The room had been decked with late-blooming roses that cast up a sugary glasshouse scent. Yet amongst the profusion of china and silver, the atmosphere was one of flamboyance, rather than celebration. Mrs. Croxon announced that we should eat ‘exactly the Bill of Fare as given by a most genteel Countess at Bath’. I had no appetite for sardines in mustard, creamed oats and kidneys, for I had a stomach full of butterflies, as my mother had called my fits of nerves.”
