‘Jensen, you’ll have to take the little room; your Aunt Marjorie is in the put-up bed downstairs and Sidney’s in the big spare. He’s gone to bed early too, exhausted, poor chap.’

‘Gosh, Sidney! I’d forgotten about him,’ I said. ‘How lovely of him to turn up out of the blue.’

Marjorie harrumphed. ‘Not sure his son would agree.’

Betsy pursed her lips. ‘Hmm. Sidney is recovering from a heart attack and was under doctor’s orders to rest. That’s why he didn’t come to Ted’s funeral and didn’t want to worry me by mentioning it in his condolence card. His son and daughter-in-law practically had him under lock and key.’

‘So that’s why I wasn’t allowed to talk to him!’ I said. ‘At least he got my messages, though.’

Jensen gave a bemused smile. ‘How did he get here?’

Marjorie laughed. ‘The old devil waited until they’d gone out this morning and ran away! He enlisted a friend to drive him to the airport, then took a train and taxi here.’

‘He sounds a bit of a character.’ I couldn’t wait to meet him properly although, I thought, stifling a yawn, I was glad it wouldn’t be until tomorrow.

‘Just what this place needs: another rebellious pensioner,’ Jensen muttered with a comical look of despair.

‘He’s exactly what we need; he’s such good fun,’ said Betsy with glee. ‘I made him phone his son to let him know he was safe. It was quite a colourful conversation, I can tell you. Anyway, Lottie, back to you; what did the hospital say?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ I said vaguely. ‘They told me off for not looking after myself properly. But luckily the blow to my head didn’t do any major damage.’

I turned round so Betsy could feel the egg-shaped lump.

‘Crumbs, that’s quite a bump.’

Nothing compared to the bump I was going to get, I thought wryly.

‘That’s good news,’ said Betsy, reaching for her glass.

‘Who’s ready for more good news?’ said Marjorie, beaming. ‘We’ve only just finished cashing up and I can tell you, the bank manager is going to be very pleased with us all. Very pleased indeed.’

‘Yes,’ Betsy chipped in. ‘Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we sold over a thousand bottles of wine of the 2015 vintage today.’

‘Amazing!’ My eyes opened wide; the retail value of that would be around thirty thousand pounds! We still had several thousand bottles to sell, plus a decent quantity from the previous year, but it was great news and fingers crossed would be the start of good things to come.

‘Not only that,’ Marjorie continued, ‘we took lots of pre-orders on the next vintage and had over two hundred visitors in total, some of whom have promised to re-order next month.’