‘Jensen doesn’t know a thing about it. It was my idea,’ said Marjorie. ‘I asked Godfrey to put an ad in this month’s parish magazine. We deliberately kept it off the internet in case, by chance, Jensen came across it. We wanted to surprise you.’

‘You certainly did that,’ Betsy scoffed. ‘Good grief. So tell me about my vacancy, then.’

I went through into the wine store while the three of them outlined the job they thought needed doing, more or less repeating what I already knew from the advert. This part of the winery was much smaller than the main section but nonetheless took my breath away. I’d never seen so many bottles of sparkling wine in one place in my entire life. The walls were edged top to bottom with wine racks and every row was full. There was hardly any spare floor visible; the centre of the room was stacked with cardboard boxes loaded on to pallets and each box contained twelve bottles.

There must have been thousands of pounds’ worth of stock in here, I thought. I wonder why none of it had been sold. I left the area and crossed the tank room again and into the third section. There were several machines in here, the largest had a conveyor belt, but what the other ones did was anybody’s guess. There were more pallets of bottles here too, this time brand-new empty ones. Although judging by the layer of dust on the top box, nothing had been bottled recently. I re-joined the others.

‘We all want you to stay in your own home where you’re comfortable,’ Marjorie was saying. ‘And I’ll visit as much as I can, but all the stairs in your house make it impossible for me to stay longer than one night.’

‘I know that, Mar.’ Betsy patted her hand. ‘I don’t know how I’d have coped without you this last month since Ted died.’

‘We’re all happy to carry on volunteering,’ said Godfrey. ‘Clare, Roger and myself. Pippa, of course, our youngster, is staff and does more hours; she’ll always be here. And I know Matt is happy to help too when the time comes for bottling. But none of us can be here full-time.’

‘Roger, you’re a born organizer,’ Betsy said, ‘you be the manager. I’ll pay you instead. There, sorted. No need to bring in strangers.’

‘I’m still a PE teacher, Betsy,’ Roger reminded her. ‘I have a job. Viticulture is simply my hobby.’

‘Still teaching? Good grief,’ she muttered incredulously.

‘I am only fifty-five,’ he said huffily.