‘It’s Bring Your Bake Off Judge to Work day at school. That’s Kes’s dad, Mack. The beard’s a new thing, along with being really nice to Pax and infiltrating the village. Now Kes is on the school register, we can’t keep him away. He’s even joined the PTA and her divorce solicitor’s the chair. He so wants her back. He’s got stiff competition, mind you. Of which—’

‘Ladies! Petra, you look too divine. Really, the angels are deafening. I’m off to the bar. Anyone want a drink?’

‘We’re good, Bay.’

‘Good-oh. Chat later.’

‘Back on the market any day now, my informants tell me. Monique’s put the deposit down on a barn conversion to rent in Earls Compton.’

‘It’s so sad when marriages end.’

‘Sometimes it’s just the beginning though, isn’t it?’

‘Bay’s one hell of a catch.’

‘Put your hands down, Petra.’

‘Ha ha. I killed off Father Willy, remember?’

‘How’s your blond Irish royalist rebel?’

‘He is going to be dead on a battlefield this week if he doesn’t show up here tonight.’

‘Rest in peace, Luca O’Brien.’

‘No! He’s the only vegan in the village. He has to be here.’

‘He’s out riding. Carly told me. They’ve been practising all week.’

‘He’s what?’

*

Lester asked the taxi driver to stop halfway up the drive. He needed a moment to regroup. He hadn’t anticipated that coming home would feel so overwhelming.

‘Don’t think you should walk from here, man. It’s well dark out there, innit?’

‘I think you’ll find it’s unusually light tonight. It’s a supermoon.’

‘Is that like a moon in a mask and cloak fighting the forces of evil, eh-huh, eh-huh, eh-huh?’ The taxi driver had a laugh like Basil Brush.

‘You can drive on, it’s fine.’

Lester hadn’t told anybody of his intention to discharge himself from hospital a week early. It wasn’t that he wanted to stage a surprise. It was because he didn’t want a fuss.

He couldn’t hope to navigate the stairs in his cottage yet, but he and Ronnie had decided he was to have the run of the old housekeeper’s rooms beside the back lobby, which were within short reach of kitchen, lavatory and – most importantly – a flat walk to the stable yards. There was already a day bed down there, from memory, and he could live without bedding and other flimflammeries for one night if it meant being home on the Wolf Moon.

‘Man, what was that!’ His driver slalomed into the arrivals yard. ‘I saw something moving. Headless ghosts on horseback or something. You hear that?’ He was rigid with fear. ‘Music.’

Lester heard it. He could hardly believe his ears, but he could definitely hear it.

‘Man, what is that shit?’

‘That,’ he handed several ten-pound notes across, ‘Is Holst’s Opus 32, fourth movement – Jupiter, to be precise. Keep the change.’

Waving the driver impatiently away with a crutch rather than accept his offers of help, Lester made his way laboriously beneath the arch. The Percys’ old gramophone player was sitting on a table in the middle of the yard.