Grenville drove the last familiar mile to the main gate of the Cadver quickly and without further thought about Ursula, preoccupied with his plans for the following day. He had invited a number of distinguished people to the house for what he had called an ‘informal conference on the future of our countryside’. The people had been chosen for their power and influence. There was the head of the newly formed Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland, the Chairman of the Country Landowners’Association and a chief adviser to the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, besides the directors of a number of environmental charities. ‘We are the policy makers,’ he had written in his invitation, ‘and I feel we should have the opportunity for an intense and informal exploration of our views before more policy decisions are taken.’

The more cynical of the recipients of this invitation reflected that Marcus Grenville was not yet a policy maker and that the conference was more about giving him the inside knowledge that would allow him to be one, rather than about any altruistic concern about nature conservation. Whatever his motives, he was determined that the conference should be a success.

He wondered briefly whether Olivia would put in an appearance the following day. The least she could do, he thought, would be to come in to lunch. She might enjoy that. It would remind her of the time when the Cadver was often full of famous people. She was always confident enough in the house.

He had thought, at first, that his wife’s agoraphobia was a convenient excuse for not attending the constituency functions which she so hated.

‘They’re all such dreadful little people,’ she would say after the annual dinner dance or garden party. ‘I don’t know what to talk to them about.’

The illness had developed rapidly after the flooding of the valley and it had occurred to him too that it was a sort of revenge because in the end he had been unable to prevent the reservoir from being built.

He had to concede that whatever the original cause of the panic attacks they must be real enough now. Olivia never left the Cadver grounds and her forays from the house into the garden were becoming more scarce. She could not still be feigning illness – it would be a disproportionate and irrational way of showing displeasure to make herself a prisoner for twenty years.

But she was an irrational and obsessive woman, he thought as the car pulled up outside the house. With regret he remembered other women he had known, women who laughed and danced and enjoyed his company.