‘She came with my mother and their parents to the Cadver for a shooting weekend. My grandfather was a friend of Olivia Grenville’s grandfather. Ursula was quite young, eighteen or nineteen. Fred Ottway’s parents were tenant farmers at Back Rigg and Fred worked there for them. The story of how they met has become quite famous in the family. Ursula was bored at the Cadver and walked out by herself. She bumped into Fred in the lane and they started talking. She invited him back to the Cadver for tea! Can you imagine what they thought when she turned up with one of the tenant farmers still in his working clothes? Fred tried to refuse but she had enchanted him. I don’t think Olivia has ever forgiven her. She waited until she was twenty-one, then they married. By then Fred’s father was dead and they moved into the farm. That was just before the War and she’s been at Back Rigg ever since.’

‘Isn’t it too much for her now? She must be quite elderly.’ George was not really interested. He was looking out at the hills, wishing he had a day to walk there. If there were golden eagles in the Lake District why not here, where there were fewer observers?

‘She doesn’t farm the land any more,’ Molly said. ‘The Estate’s leased it to a neighbour. She’s just got the house and a few chickens. And her cats.’

The road and the river were at the bottom of a steep-sided, twisting valley. There was little other traffic. They drove through a thicket of deciduous trees and past a huge Forestry Commission conifer plantation. Then there was a sharp bend and suddenly they were on the top of the dam with the lake spreading far to the west. To the east was a sharp drop and the regulated flow of the river trickling on down the valley.

‘Can you stop for a few minutes?’ George asked. ‘The thing doesn’t start until ten and I don’t want to be early. Let’s see if there’s anything interesting on the reservoir before we go on.’

Molly waited patiently in the car while he took his tripod and telescope from the boot and began to scan the lake. She had never shared his obsession, had never properly understood it, but she knew that birdwatching was essential to him. Without it, the latent depression that sometimes troubled him would become overwhelming. The light was behind him so he had a good view of the lake, but when he straightened he seemed disappointed.

‘Nothing much there,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s too high and the sides are too steep …’ He spoke almost to himself.

Molly drove on across the dam, past the gothic towers built at the end of it and Keeper’s Cottage to the main gate.