I shook my head. ‘Things definitely have to change. For a start off there are thousands of bottles of wine to get moving and bills to pay. What I’m saying is that we have to do the kind thing, which is not necessarily the most sensible.’

His lips twitched. ‘How about kind and sensible?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, miming pushing up my sleeves. ‘Now, no more arguments over lunch; it’ll give you indigestion.’

‘You’re bossier than Gran.’

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ I gave him a mock stern look and I heard him laughing all the way along the hall.

Honestly, I thought an hour later as I scribbled a few notes, I was wasted as a gardener slash vineyard manager, I should have been a private detective. I’d uncovered all sorts of nuggets of information that could change everything. I’d even found an old photograph of Betsy and Marjorie with two men I presumed were their husbands and another man who, according to a note on the back, was called Sidney. They were standing in a row of vines holding glasses of red wine aloft in a country that definitely wasn’t England. A bit more digging through old emails had not only unearthed Sidney’s full name but also revealed that he had given Ted advice in the early days of Butterworth Wines. If Sidney was still alive he could be a big help to Betsy this summer. But the best find was Ted’s meticulously kept notebooks. He had two sets: one for the vineyard, in which he noted everything from hours of sunshine to the exact location of frost patches on winter mornings, and the other for every blend of wine he’d ever made. His writing was scratchy and hard to decipher and what bits I could read didn’t mean much to me, but I was certain that the books would be a great help to us all over the coming season.

Ted’s desk hadn’t been touched for several months, judging by the pile of unopened post, the unanswered emails and an answerphone which had stopped taking messages because it was full.

There were condolence cards too, stacked on one end of the desk, opened but still in their envelopes; the thought of Betsy sitting at Ted’s desk trying to read them with her magnifying glass made my heart ache. I picked out the correspondence that needed the most urgent attention to pass to Betsy and Jensen and made my way back outside to the patio.

My insides were fizzing with more bubbles than a glass of Butterworth Classic Cuvée; I had the beginnings of an idea and if I could get Jensen on side, it just might save the vineyard.

‘Someone looks like the cat who got the cream,’ said Marjorie, looking up from her bowl of trifle as I joined them.