Sidney had helped us so much in the last two weeks; I was going to miss our early-morning walks amongst the vines and the little lessons he’d been giving me in the winery about all the various flavours and enhancements that could be added to our wines to lift them from ordinary to extraordinary. Trawling through Ted’s never-ending collection of reference books had given me lots of knowledge, but it was no substitute for the hands-on experience of an expert like his old friend.

‘It was Betsy who found this place, you know,’ said Sidney, as we took our snippers to a particularly voracious vine that had sent springy new shoots out to the row opposite. ‘It came up at auction. He and I had scoured the South Downs in the hope of finding something on the same seam of chalk which runs from England under the Channel to the Champagne region where my vineyard is. Ted was adamant that would give him the best shot of recreating a sparkling wine to match champagne. Betsy had other ideas.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ I said with a laugh.

Sidney plucked a few leaves away from the bunches of ripening grapes, taking a moment to explain how removing some greenery would let the sun get to the fruit to ripen it, but still keep enough foliage to allow for photosynthesis to feed the plant. Then he continued, ‘Her daughter, Samantha, and Jensen had not long moved back to the area after leaving Jensen’s father. Betsy didn’t think it was the right time to move away, she wanted her and Ted to be hands-on grandparents and heaven knows, Jensen needed a decent male role model in his life.’

My ears pricked up; I didn’t know much about Jensen’s parents but it hadn’t escaped my notice that Jensen was a Butterworth and obviously hadn’t taken his father’s surname.

Just like you, I said to the new life inside me. My baby would be an Allbright, Harvey Nesbitt was going to have nothing to do with it. With him or her, I meant. My heart gave a jolt, remembering Jensen’s words in the hospital. You’ll have to tell him; he has a right to know … But not yet, I wasn’t ready to face him. Not without my family to back me up, and who knew when that was going to happen. I tuned back into Sidney’s story, feeling decidedly uneasy …

‘Ted knew when he was beaten; if Betsy didn’t have her heart on a move to the south coast it would never happen. So Ted and Betsy came out here and met with the couple who were on their knees from trying to breed pigs and grow garlic and desperate to sell.