Wales had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. ‘Well, I was always going to be dropping by,’ he replied. ‘So it seemed a good idea to have them with me. An American Girl doll for Monique. They’re making them again, you know. And Lego Star Wars for young Harry.’

Her scepticism grew even more pronounced. ‘So you’ve been talking to Bret, then, I see.’

‘Perhaps just a little,’ Francis Dalby admitted. ‘That wine looks damned inviting. I notice your five years in this country have not softened your manners any, young lady. Perhaps you would like to invite your old friends and employers in.’

‘Or perhaps not,’ she mocked, turning around and walking back into the house, waving them along behind her. She could hear the bath running upstairs, and the children laughing as they splashed about in it.

‘Bret,’ she called up, ‘it’s Dalby and Wales. Are you going to come down for a drink when you’re finished up there?’

‘Sorry, I knew they were coming,’ he called back. ‘They said they’d torture me if I let on.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Caitlin muttered as she led her guests through to the kitchen. A pot of osso buco in the oven was about twenty minutes away from being ready, and the places were already set for dinner. Four plates at the big table and two at the smaller children’s table, where Monique and Harry ate most of their meals. Bret had used the royal wedding plates he’d insisted on buying last week. His idea of irony.

‘Your field craft is getting rusty down here,’ said Dalby.

‘It’s sharp enough for dealing with country vicars and village aldermen,’ she replied. ‘Sit down. I’ll open a new bottle. We had half of this last night and it’s oxidised. Life in the boonies, what can I say?’

‘Well, you could say how happy you are to see us,’ said Wales, teasing her.

‘I am, Wales. As long as you’re not here to try to talk me back into the office. I’m retired now. A lady of leisure.’

She uncorked a bottle of Côtes du Rhone and poured a generous measure into two clean glasses.

‘You’re not completely retired, Caitlin,’ Wales pointed out. ‘Dalby here tells me you’re kicking ass as a guest lecturer down at the college in London. And you’re not averse to doing a bit of consultancy here and there.’

She smiled. ‘Paperwork, Wales. I read papers and I write them. That’s all I do these days. When I’m not looking after the children. Or riding shotgun on the preparation for the crucial contribution of our little village to the wedding of the fucking century. Which is all the time.’

‘Wales and Dalby!’ boomed her husband, who had reappeared at the kitchen door with a glass in hand and a guilty look about him.