‘Have you had any inter­esting things left behind?’ Well, tennis balls, old trainers, healthy food­stuffs; Joanna is strug­gling for some­thing note­worthy to say. ‘And some splendid for­eign lan­guage adult magazines’, she fin­ishes with a tri­umphant flourish. I kick her under the table but the plaster cast on her broken leg is a sub­stan­tial con­struc­tion, cour­tesy of Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, and she feels not a thing.

We had picked up Reuters tennis cor­res­pondent Pritha Sarkar from the road­works dis­aster that is cur­rently Wimbledon Station and spent the day vis­iting the houses that would become home for the stars of the centre court. It didn’t help that Joanna’s leg was propped up on the dash­board of the Mini, or that I was doing the driving for the first time in a few years.