The Honourable Archibald Barnabas Cooke Wellingham is my mother’s second cousin once removed’s goddaughter’s husband’s cousin. How Norfolk’s most eligible bachelor came to hear I was temporarily living nearby should be inexplicable, but the crème de la crème of the British social class can drum up a connection, as tenuous as it may be, in every civilised country, capital, county or state round the world at best, and throughout Europe at least.

Now, please don’t mistake my family, the Mahls, for being this high up the social ladder; we’re middle class and always have been. But Sarah Smith, the goddaughter of my mother’s second cousin once removed, married well and left her modest home in north-west London to land comfortably in a Wiltshire mansion of great proportions, with a bank balance to match and a title in tow. This stratospheric leap of social class sent verbal repercussions travelling at great speed down the maternal line of my family. So, when Mum, who has always been hot on genealogy, heard I had a commission to draw racehorses in north Norfolk, she immediately informed me ‘it’s no distance at all’ from said goddaughter’s husband’s cousin’s country seat. And within seconds she’d stopped talking to me and picked up the telephone to call her second cousin once removed and make the connection.

Within forty-eight hours, much to my mother’s triumphant joy, I received a formal invitation to join Archibald Barnabas Cooke Wellingham’s house party on the evening of Saturday 18 August at Fontaburn Hall.

My mother having gone to such lengths left me feeling I couldn’t possibly refuse and so, despite the fact I’d never met any of the tenuous links, I signed myself up for a dinner party and night with a houseful of grand strangers.

It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with this type of company, as several pet portrait commissions have led me to family piles in the past and my years in private education (albeit on a fully funded scholarship) have stood me in good stead, but Fontaburn Hall fell bang in the middle of a week’s work. Not something I ever like to break.

I’d been commissioned by the renowned Norfolk trainer Aidan McCann, or ‘Canny’, as he’s better known amongst friends and rivals who envy his ability to pip them to the post. He wanted me to draw six racehorses, his ‘yard favourites’ as he calls them. Cha ching! went my dormant commercial side, waking to the realisation that, if these drawings were a success, I could go on and sell prints to the owners as well as every winning punter from then on in. I had to make these pictures as good as I possibly could, no matter the subject was an animal I knew very little about.

Riding isn’t my thing. I didn’t grow up with horses so I find it hard to understand what all the fuss is about. It seems to me a black or white matter: you either love them, or you don’t. Those who do were weaned off breast and onto saddle – not a moment in between, plonked on Shetlands even before they can walk. Although the self-lessness of mothers whose little poppets have been bitten by the bug is remarkable when you come to think about it. Sacrificing lie-ins for mucking out and putting up with that smell both inside and out. Not to mention the expense of it all.

Apart from pony-club camp – and the inevitable snogging – I’m only attracted to one other horse-related activity – a day at the races, rubbing shoulders with champagne socialists and men in top hats.

So, when Canny asked me to draw six of his National Hunt winners, despite the fact I knew I was taking on an enormous challenge (I’ve only drawn one horse before) I gladly accepted in the hopes an invitation to the Cheltenham Gold Cup or the Grand National might follow.

When we’d struck the deal, he immediately informed me, ‘The middle week of August is a good out-of-season time to visit.’ The horses would be roughed off still, and with the slight decrease in the amount of work he suggested yard groom Lucy would have me to stay in one of her two spare rooms. Canny would by then have fled Pluton Farm Stables to summer on his yacht in Do We Really Care Where.

It would be the first job I’ve had when the commissioner is absent, although the names of the horses – Boy Meets Man, On the Pull, Wearing the Trousers for the geldings, and Mum’s the Word, Great Knockers and High Maintenance for the mares – tells you more than enough about Canny’s clientele.