James got Palmerston. It was set out in the will, the cat described and mentioned by name, and bequeathed ‘if the animal should survive me, to James Alexander Fyfield, of Ewes Hall Farm, Great Sindon, he being the only person I know I can trust . . .’

‘What an awful thing to say,’ said Mirabel. ‘Imagine, literally to have a thing like that written down. I’m sure James is welcome to it. I should certainly have had it destroyed, you can’t have a cat about the place with a baby.’

Palmerston had lived so long at Sindon Lodge that he was always going back there, though he kept instinctively out of Mirabel’s way. For Mirabel, contrary to what Aunt Julie had predicted, did not sell the house. Nor did she make any of those changes the village had speculated about when it knew she was not going to sell. Sindon Lodge was not painted white with a blue front door or recarpeted or its kitchen fitted out with the latest gadgets. Mirabel did nothing ostentatious, made no splash and bought herself nothing but a small and modest car. For a while it seemed as if she were lying low, keeping herself to herself, mourning in fact, and James’s mother said perhaps they had all misjudged her and she had really loved Aunt Julie after all.

Things began to change with the appearance on the scene of Gilbert Coleridge. Where Mirabel had met him no one seemed to know, but one day his big yellow Volvo estate car was seen outside Sindon Lodge, on the next Mirabel was seen in the passenger seat of that car, and within hours it was all over the village that she had a man friend.

‘He sounds a nice, suitable sort of person,’ said James’s mother, whose bush telegraph system was always sound. ‘Two or three years older than she and never had a wife – well, you never know these days, do you? – and already a partner in his firm. It would be just the thing for Oliver. He needs a man about the house.’

‘Let’s hope she has the sense to marry this one,’ said James’s father.

But on the whole, apart from this, the Fyfield family had lost interest in Mirabel. It had been galling for them that Mirabel, having got what she wanted with their help, first the entrée to Sindon Lodge and then the possession of it, had lost interest in them. She was not to be met with in the village because she scarcely walked anywhere if she could help it, and although Rosamund called several times, Mirabel was either not at home or else far too busy to ask anyone in. James overheard his mother saying that it was almost as if Mirabel felt she had said too much while she stayed with them, had shown too openly her desires, and now these were gratified, wanted as little as possible to do with those who had listened to her confidences. But it suited the Fyfields equally, for the arrival of Mirabel was always followed by trouble and by demands.