Josh laughed. “Maybe, but you can’t walk around in a pair of sludge-coloured salopettes. It’s just . . . geeksville.” He pulled the bulky outfit out of the suitcase and threw it onto the bed. “What else have you got in here?” He flicked through Dan’s clothes. “Dad, you’ve brought at least three of your Armani suits! When are you thinking of wearing them?”

Dan gave his son’s hand a slap to get him away from his suitcase. “All right, mastermind. Just because your daily attire makes you look as if you’re about to muck out a pigsty.”

“Oooh!” Josh sang out. “That’s a bit acid.”

Dan smiled. “Okay, point taken. We’ll go find a shop in Fort William this afternoon and I’ll get myself kitted out in some appallingly countrified attire. How would that suit you?”

“I’m sure whatever you wear, Dad, you won’t forego your usual sartorial elegance.”

Dan blew a raspberry. “My word, you are an eloquent little devil today, aren’t you?”

At twenty past one, having shared the peaty-brown water of a deep and luxuriously hot bath, they left a warming cottage and drove to the Trenchards’ house for lunch. It turned out to be a hurried affair, mostly because Patrick was champing at the bit to get to the factory and start showing Dan and Josh the ropes. By a quarter to three, he had both father and son standing in the packing room, wearing identical garb of a blue boiler suit with matching peaked cap, a pair of Wellington boots, a long plastic apron, and a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. Both looked awesomely surprised at the speed of their incumbency and at the task that Patrick had set for them.

“Best way to learn about this business is from the grass roots upwards,” he said, pushing himself in his wheelchair over to one of the long, stainless steel packing tables. “Maria José! Could you come over here for a minute?”

A young Spanish girl with flawless sallow skin and dark brown eyes walked across from the far side of the packing room. Her black hair was gathered in a pony-tail and pulled through the adjusting band at the back of her cap, and even though she was dressed in the similarly unsexy style of both Dan and Josh, it did nothing to diminish her obvious Latin good looks.