Dear Mary: should I admit that I don’t like my daughter’s mother-in-law-to-be?

Q. I was at a house party in Yorkshire where one of the other guests had contributed a large joint of cooked beef. Eighteen of us were within minutes of sitting down to eat it with salad for lunch, but while helping to lay the table I could smell that something was not right. The meat was fashionably rare and had also travelled for more than four hours in a hot car from London. Our host agreed with me. The very last thing she wanted was to offend this guest who had spent so much and made such an effort, but she could not think of how to explain her last-minute substitution of eggs mayonnaise without telling the truth. Unfortunately the well-meaning guest insisted that the beef was ‘meant’ to smell like that and kept urging our host to serve it. How could we have handled this better, Mary?

– L.P.,