Verbena Clarke is not my favourite client. She lives in an expensive barn conversion on the Widecombe road, at a place where the countryside around begins to change. The trees thin out, the land opens up on either side as the hedgerows give way, replaced by grass verges and low, drystone walls. In the distance the green firs of a Forestry Commission plantation turn the horizon into a dark and spiky line. This is not yet the moor proper, but the land has lost the lush softness of the valley below. It has grown harder. Still beautiful, it has sharper edges, as if the moor’s underlying granite is trying to push up from beneath.

I parked the van by the side of the road. Mrs Clarke does not allow me to drive in through her gates and park in her courtyard next to her Porsche and her Range Rover. She says my vehicle is an eyesore. So I park it a hundred yards down the road, on the grass verge, where I’m certain she cannot avoid seeing it from the windows of her studio; although this small satisfaction is no compensation for having to stump back down the road in wet and windy weather.

Only a tantalising glimpse of the barn is visible, hidden, as it is, behind a high wall. Only as I come around the granite gatepost into the courtyard, is it possible to appreciate the beauty of the building, old walls and oak beams wedded seamlessly to modern screens of glass. Mrs Clarke is a design consultant, and what she has created from a cluster of derelict farm buildings is remarkable. Rumour has it – and by rumour, you understand, I mean Ricky and Morris – that there is an ex-husband lurking in the background, an ageing rock star, who stumped up the money for the barn development as a pay-off for dumping Verbena and her teenage girls and running off with a younger version.

To my surprise there was another vehicle parked beside the Porsche, an old lorry, surely not smart enough, I thought peevishly, to be permitted entrance to the courtyard. The tailgate was down and I peered nosily into the inside. It was empty. The front door of the barn was flung open, but I didn’t know whether something was coming out, or something had just gone in. I got the answer when I stepped into the glass atrium and found a large, old-fashioned dresser, unattended, and blocking most of the hall. I called out a yoo-hoo as I squeezed my way past.