The living-room was decorated in soft blues – stylish, tasteful, with antique French furniture upholstered in ultramarine velvet. There were tall vases of flowers all around and a marble bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson on a slender mahogany torchère. The room was a perfect reflection of Season’s personality – cool, ordered, stylish, and discreetly expensive.

‘You’re late,’ said Season, turning over a page.

Ed unlaced his boots. ‘Didn’t Ben tell you I was going to be held up?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But the fact that I was told doesn’t alter the fact that you’re late. It was a fish souffle, and I’ve had to throw it away.’

‘You threw away my supper?’

She turned another page. ‘You don’t really care for flat fish soufflé, do you? I wish you’d told me. I would have kept it for you.’

‘Season—’ he said.

She looked up at last. She was a tall girl of thirty, with a thin oval face and alarmingly wide blue eyes. Her blonde hair was scraped back on her head and held with a tortoiseshell comb. In her silk Japanese pants suit, all pastel colours and loose pleats, she looked as if she was all wrists and ankles. She was pretty, and sharp, and Ed had loved her from only about three minutes after meeting her.

Some men found Season intimidating, both physically and conversationally. But Ed was a good four inches taller, and he had a slow dark masculine assurance about him – thick black hair, dense black eyebrows, deepset eyes of refreshing green – and the warm seriousness of whatever he said had always seemed to be able to enfold itself around her prickliest comments and render them harmless.

‘I’ve asked Dilys to make you an omelette,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t feel hungry any more. The act of cooking was enough to satisfy me.’

‘What about the act of throwing it all away?’

‘That satisfied me too.’

‘So I’ve come home to a satisfied wife?’

‘If you like.’

‘We’ve got a serious problem out there in the fields.’

‘Oh, yes?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me the computers are striking for more off-time. Or is it a human problem?’

‘It’s a crop problem. There’s a kind of blight. The wheat’s rotting right in front of our eyes. So far it’s spread over fifteen or twenty acres, and it’s still spreading.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m not sure yet. I don’t even know what kind of a blight it is.’

‘It’s probably a curse from your father.’

‘Season – we’ve got twenty acres of rotten wheat out there and that isn’t funny.’

Season uncurled herself from the sofa, stood up and walked across to the inlaid French drinks cabinet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve drunk enough yet to be funny. Do you want one?’