I didn't exactly tug my forelock, but I shuffled off and gave it a bit of a limp. Round the corner I knocked on the study door. No answer. I popped my head round. Nope. Empty. Not a soul. As I came back, I heard a door slam and voices. Hugo and Roger were coming down the passageway towards the front door, from the kitchen. Roger was looking wicked and Hugo was rushing ahead, flustered.

"I am so sorry, Mr Fleming, to keep you waiting." He hastened to shake his hand. "But I had to locate my father. I knew Flora would be waiting for him, you see. Sorry, Flora, I've tracked him down for you." He handed Roger over as one would a naughty child, or an unexploded bomb. "Now, Mr Fleming, shall we go to my study?" Hugo extended an arm and led the way past us. “See if we can iron this out."

As they swept away to do business, I realized I now looked like the hired nurse, about to spend the day with my charge, a permanently bewildered senile father who habitually wandered off. Splendid.

“Sorry, my dear," purred Roger, stroking an imaginary mustache like Terry Thomas. "Got caught up in my aviary. The love birds are breeding and I was just sorting out their nesting boxes."

"Is ten o’clock too early for you, Roger?" I asked, as we made our way to the gunroom. “Make it half past?"

"No, no, it's perfect. Been up since six. It's just, well, I was thinking, my dear." We went in and he hastened across to sit in his chair, in the wrong shirt and slackss, I noticed, but beggars can't be choosers. Getting him to change would take forever. “Must we do it every day?"

I smiled. “We're not doing it every day, Roger, we're pausing for Fridays and weekends. And it's only eight sittings."

"Eight!" His shoulders sagged dramatically and he let his head droop theatrically. “So boring! All I do is sit!" He really was like a small child.

"Well, you can listen to the radio—"

“Read the paper?"

"No, that would get in the way, but—"

"Watch TV? Loose Women? I like that Penny Lancaster. Feisty bird. I'd have a go."

"It doesn't really work, Roger." I'd been asked this before. “The eyes go a bit glazed. It all looks a bit – day room at the loony bin." I realized I became desperately un-PC in Roger's company.

He pouted. "Only the eyes. You could pop those in later."

I smiled. “Tell you what, let's see how it goes and if you get a bit fidgety we'll make it a short morning, OK?"

He sighed. "Righty-ho. You know best. Only it's dull, dull, dull." He pouted glumly out of the window.