I was shocked at a party recently when a woman I hardly know announced to me and another guest that she was the ‘mistress’ of a certain man in the room.

I discussed it with my American friend in a local Italian afterwards. Holly took a robust view. ‘Since when does a mistress reveal herself publicly?’ she said, adding that the lover (married, we’d heard, to a third wife, not present that evening) should ‘kick the mistress to the kerb for not playing the role she signed up for’.