Fran paused in the middle of shrugging into her secretarial jacket. ‘Gareth told me about your gaffe with the new man from Peapods. What’s he like?’

‘Very nice – extremely attractive – but married to Karen or Carol or someone, who is still living in the Channel Islands but will be joining him shortly. I’m going now before we’re both late for work.’

‘Sit down! You can’t leave it at that.’ Fran gulped at her coffee. ‘I’ve heard all about Drew Fitzgerald – he’s absolutely gorgeous by all accounts and he’s famous and he’s bringing some pretty prestigious horses with him and –’

‘Peter said that he was famous, too,’ Maddy mused. ‘What for?’

‘Oh, he used to be an amateur jump jockey, Kimberley said. He won some major race fairly spectacularly. I think it must have been abroad …’

‘And when did Kimberley ring you?’

‘This morning, after Gareth.’

Maddy shook her head. The jungle drums had been red hot. She stood up. ‘I really do have to go, Fran. Oh, did Kimberley tell you that Bronwyn Pugh thinks I can’t be trusted with her Bernie?’

Fran shook her head, her eyes wide.

Maddy smiled. ‘Good – at least I’ve got some secrets left.’

‘Maddy! What the hell did you do to Bernie?’ Fran was torn between finding out every last detail and risking Barty’s wrath if she was late. ‘Oh, come on, Mad. Bernie’ll keep – he’s a minus on our lust scale – but at least tell me about your run-in with Drew Fitzgerald. We always tell each other everything.’

‘I have told you. Everything. He’s attractive, charming, funny – he’s also married. And I’ve got to dash.’ She let herself out and ran down the path, then looked over her shoulder at Fran glowering in the doorway. ‘Oh, and he’s got the sexiest smile in the world.’

The morning passed quickly, as they always did. Maddy had three regular cleaning jobs on Thursdays and spent two hours at each. Monday and Tuesday were given solely to Diana James-Jordan and John Hastings, who owned the largest houses and the largest yards in the village. Wednesday afternoons were also fully booked, and Friday was paper workday. She fitted her own life into Wednesday mornings and weekends.

She was proud of Shadows – and of herself. Unlike Suzy, her teenage ambition had come late in life, but now Shadows was a proper business, with employees and an accountant and headed notepaper, and she was a proper woman. That was what she had hoped Peter noticed. Nothing physical. Just the late emergence of the real Maddy Beckett.

She smiled to herself as she cycled back to the cottage to grab her usual lunch of a haphazard sandwich and coffee before starting her afternoon rounds. Shadows filled her life. If she’d had a lover, he’d have to have been slotted in on Wednesday mornings. But then – she crashed the bike against the scrubby box hedge – as she didn’t have a lover, and hadn’t had one either before or after Peter, the problem didn’t arise.