He cleared his throat. ‘I can cope.’

‘Can you?’ The bluest eyes in the Cotswolds, ever amused, regarded him shrewdly as he shuffled aside to let the younger of her little black-and-tan dogs bustle in to lick Stubbs’ now empty bowl.

Not for the first time, he sensed she knew precisely how much his hips hurt, how bad his eyesight was, how hard he found it to push a full barrow up the muck plank these days. ‘Done it long enough.’

‘That’s the point. You’re supposed to start easing off a bit now I’m here; you’re too valuable.’ Laying down her phone and handbag, she stooped to help her elderly dog over the front step.

‘If you say so.’

‘I do, Lester, I do. Pax should be here.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the stud’s drive as if willing her daughter to appear. ‘Damn. I wanted to talk to her before I set off, too. I don’t buy this story about not going to Scotland for Hogmanay because of the puppy, do you? I mean it’s jolly lovely that she’s offered to help here while I’m gallivanting, but it’s not like her to let Kes out of her sight. Alice could have the puppy. We could have him here, come to that.’

Listening to the snarling and snapping coming from his kitchen, Lester was grateful, at least, that Ronnie’s heelers were going with her, their manners as tenacious as their mistress’s. Pax’s Scottish deerhound puppy – a Christmas present to her husband that Lester suspected was really to herself – was already bigger than Stubbs, to which the little bearded terrier took great umbrage, as well as its sharp teeth and general clumsy larkiness. Lester was rather hoping Pax would leave it in the car. Like Ronnie, he didn’t believe the Hogmanay story either. Those big hare eyes had too many unspilled tears in them.

‘I’ve suggested she stays here in the house tonight,’ Ronnie told him. ‘No point shivering in that tin box alone, and the ghastly M and Ms won’t let the puppy in their bungalow because of their cat.’

Ronnie was talking about Muir and Mairi Forsyth, Pax’s hollow cheeked in-laws. Lester thought the nickname very disrespectful. Straight-backed and snowy-haired, the Forsyths struck him as show-bred examples of parsimonious, doughty Scots, unlike their fast-talking and profligate son, Mack. He was the reason his wife and child were enduring a second winter in a static caravan in the shadow of the gutted shell of an old Cotswold rectory they were renovating to live in. Pax was loyally tight-lipped, but her sister Alice didn’t mind who knew that Mack Forsyth – who Alice claimed fleeced local farmers by underpaying for development projects – had blown the budget on half a dozen million-pound barn conversions they now couldn’t sell. Mack’s parents, who had moved down from Scotland to rent nearby, were helping keep the ship afloat as far as Lester could tell. Pax should be grateful, not listen to Ronnie pouring scorn with her usual disrespect for seniority.