She gave him one back. ‘Not if the marriage is dead.’

The bedclothes rustled crossly. ‘Still, sensible looking into the village school for him.’

‘Is she?’ Ronnie was astonished.

‘Headmistress there is a rare sort, I’m told. Not the most discreet, but strong on old-fashioned values. Very fond of parkin. They have actors’ and lawyers’ children there.’

Ronnie hadn’t thought him interested in anything in the village unconnected to four legs. This new-found, garrulous Lester was a revelation, not unconnected to epic amounts of recent anaesthesia and analgesia.

There was an unfamiliar Tupperware tub on his bedside table, lid bulging beneath its baked contents. ‘Lester, has Pip been here?’

He sucked his teeth, reaching a hand out to Stubbs’ head, the creases on his face folding in defensively. ‘Hear the Irish lad’s been on the stallion this morning.’

‘Good grief, the spies are out. Tell me, has Pip got a new job? With MI5 maybe?’

‘Useless with a shavings fork, that woman.’ His tongue probed his cheeks for the last cake traces. ‘The Turner girl’s a harder worker. Better not leave it any longer to snap her up. There’s others have their sights on her.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Hard workers get noticed in a village.’

‘Well, Carly hasn’t come back to help us.’

‘Have you asked her?’

‘Pax insists we can’t afford anyone else.’

‘Pay her my wage; I’m no good to you while I’m in here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lester.’

‘Irish fellow’s not one of those as picks up a broom for the love of it.’

‘You’d be surprised. And we have Pax too.’

‘She’ll run.’

‘Of course she won’t.’

‘Just like her mother, that one.’ He gave the bedsheets a fractious tug. ‘Did you deal with the letters?’

Ronnie started guiltily. Those confounded letters. ‘I will, I promise.’

He glared at her.

‘Pax is way too distracted to nose around your cottage, Lester.’

‘Give the Turner girl a job. You need time to sort your family out.’ He reached out his old-fashioned pocket diary and dictated a telephone number which she obligingly fed into her phone.

‘Call her, then.’ Lester looked so old and frail in his striped pyjamas, she couldn’t bring herself to argue the point.

‘We can’t afford more staff.’ She lifted the phone to her ear, grateful for Carly’s monotone announcing she couldn’t answer her phone. ‘Voicemail. I’ll text her later.’ Relieved, she offered the ultimate pacifier to take his mind off it. ‘Will you teach young Kes to ride when you come home? I don’t think Luca’s terribly keen.’

The creases unfolded in delight. ‘We’ll make a guardsman of him like his great-grandfather. Have the little man fit to gallop into battle in no time.’

‘Just rising to the trot will be fine, Lester. Let’s spare him any more conflict.’

*

‘Can’t stay!’ Carly hurried into her mother-in-law’s maisonette, a grotto of tropical warmth day or night behind its drawn curtains, television and gas fire glowing. Having cut across the fields and abandoned her muddy boots at the door, her socks gave her static shocks on the cheap carpet as she scooped up Jackson and Sienna. ‘We’re going to see the ponies!’