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Seventeen napkins had been folded like swans. Seventeen place mats depicted the paintings of Sisley, to whom Henry had been introduced by Mr and Mrs Hargreaves. Seventeen elegant name tags, illustrated with a small painting of the Café Henry, revealed where people were to sit. The painting was by Camilla.
    The guests took their allotted seats, with gasps of pleasure at the brilliance of the scene, as the rain beat impotently on the wide window of the elegant yet cheery room.
    ‘Who’s missing?’ asked Helen. ‘Why is there an empty place?’
    Hilary looked rather nervously at Henry across the table.
    ‘It’s for Benedict,’ she explained. ‘For Diana and Nigel’s son, who became Henry’s son and therefore my son.’
    Diana gasped, and Henry had the feeling that in her heaven of cow bells, cuckoo clocks and substantial dental invoices she had almost forgotten that she had a lost son.
    ‘Will you say a few words, darling?’ asked Hilary.
    This was a great shock to Henry.
    ‘Er … well … yes. Yes, of course,’ he said.
    He had absolutely no idea what he was going to say.
    ‘I have absolutely no idea what to say,’ he began. He had learnt to rely on honesty when all else seemed to fail. ‘I wasn’t expecting this. Well, of course I wasn’t. I wasn’t expecting any of this. I’m completely overwhelmed.
    ‘Well, Helen, Benedict was the victim of … of the marital difficulties of Diana and Toss— Nigel. It wouldn’t be right to go into that tonight, with Diana and Nigel both here, but Benedict resented me, and he resented his mother for marrying me. He went badly off the rails.’
    He avoided looking at Kate, who had run off with her half-brother when she was sixteen. Was that, it occurred to him now, an element in her renunciation of sex?
    ‘He disappeared. We lost all trace of him until last year, when he attacked me and tried to kill me at King’s Cross Station. That beautiful boy … and he was beautiful, he was so beautiful … was drunk, drugged and deranged.
    ‘We don’t know if Benedict is alive or dead. There is a great black hole in the middle of our family’s galaxy. We’ve tried to find him, perhaps not hard enough. We lead busy lives. I can’t even be sure that he knew who I was when he tried to kill me, though I suspect, from his fury, that he did.
    ‘My dear wife is a very special person and I am sure that her purpose in laying a place for Benedict is to say to him, across the ether, “Dear son, there is still a place for you in this house.” Of course there is.
    ‘I once believed in God. I find myself unable to do so now, but I also find myself unable … on virtually every issue I think about, actually … to be utterly confident that I am right. There’s nothing wrong with doubt. Socrates and Jesus had doubts. Kilroy Silk and Jeffrey Archer don’t. I think that proves my point. So, I say to you, Lord, if you exist, forgive my doubts and bring Benedict back home.’
    His voice cracked. The tears were flowing again. He didn’t mind. Stiff upper lips seemed to him as old-fashioned as galoshes and Brown Windsor soup. He looked round the table as he blew his nose. It was difficult to see clearly, but he was certain that Kate and Camilla and Hilary were crying, possibly Diana and Jack as well.
    ‘Right. The emotional bit’s over,’ he continued. ‘Let’s all get pissed – but before we do, and before the place setting is removed, having done its symbolic job, may I ask you all to stand and raise a glass to Benedict.’
    They all stood, raised their glasses and said, ‘To Benedict.’ Nigel, Benedict’s father, said it loudest of all, but to Henry his expression looked like that of a politician at the funeral of someone he was known to dislike.
    There was a brief, stunned silence, and then applause, which began self-consciously and ended fervently.
    The meal was delicious but conventional. Hilary hadn’t wanted the caterers to outshine Henry. There was smoked salmon,