• ALICE CURRIE, form. HAYS-SMITH,
  24, A dangerously complicated older daughter. Described by one with a way with words as exquilusciously legsome. By others as a pain in the arse. But cute, yes.
  
  
• CRESSIDA CURRIE, form. HAYS-SMITH, née LAMMING,
  49 for the first time although she will certainly be believed if she continues to claim that age for the next ten years. Faithful in her letter writing. Less so in her marriage. CRESS to her friends.
  
  
• RUPERT CURRIE,
  50, (deceased) ex-Etonian, former art and antiquities dealer. Egotist with delusions of adequacy. Roo will not be missed. "He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde
  
  
• JENNY CURRIE, form. HAYS-SMITH,
  17, Cressida’s uncomplicated younger daughter who watches too many television series on DVD and reserves her opinion of a stepfather who insisted that the girls change their surname to his.
  
  
• PHILIP MANN,
  27, competent professional photographer, brilliant user of Photoshop to prove that photographs can lie. A toker who, when wearing the tartan to which he is entitled, is known as Smokin’ Gunn. Absolutely unprepared for Alice Currie.
  
  
• DERMOT CAYCE,
  53, unrepentant Irish sesquipedalian, food journalist several notches below the likes of Giles Coren, A.A.Gill or even Michael Winner. A blithe spirit with occasional gay excursions.
  
  
• JACK,
  61, the regular recipient of long letters from Cressida, whom he really should have married instead of letting her get involved with Rupert Currie. But she and her family moved to France. And he lives in Dubai.
  
  
• EDMUND THE MAGNIFICENT,
  A godemiché.
  
  
• JAZZ and JUBA,
  Jack Russell terriers
  
  
• MISS PIP,
  A Roman silver Piperatoria, part of the Volubilis treasure.

Setting

A Canal du Midi, about twelve kilometres longer than it is in reality, winds across a fictional swathe of southwestern France between Béziers and Agde, round the village of Roque Saint-Jean, passing close to the slightly larger village of Séragnes from where holidaymakers can leave the Autoroute and make for the sprawling, over-crowded, over-sexed and over-the-top naturist resort Port Libertat.

A secondary setting of some importance assumes that the reader has at least an inkling that other worlds exist, virtual worlds populated by the players of Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games for which the unspeakable acronym MMPORPG has the virtue of being shorter. The digital metaverse VitaVersa will remind some of SecondLife. Others will simply take comfort from the words of W.S.Gilbert:

“Things are seldom what they seem.”