‘Where would you like us, chef? Vihaan asked.

‘Can I leave you two to man the coffee and brunch? All the food is set up in the ovens, ready for the break at about eleven thirty. And when that’s done, we’ll probably need to set up the large tent – John will know where it is – for after the picking. Grab whatever you can use for seating. The chairs arrived for the wedding, so we can use those; if you can put them around the barn tables outside the distillery, that would work. And we’ll probably need a good few bottles of wine for after too. There’s bread, cheese, pâté, the makings of potato salad, a whole smoked salmon and—’

‘A banquet fit for a king?’

Lily smiled ruefully. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Consider it done. And where will you be?’

‘Making sure that Henry doesn’t kill Mrs Whittaker,’ she replied with grim determination as she made her own way towards the vines.

The early morning sun was warm against the long sleeves of Lily’s top. She knew that many people had romantic notions about grape picking, but she hadn’t lied. It was hard work. Sticky, messy, dirty, hot and so much fun, she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.

Down the rows of vines she could see at least twenty people snipping at the bunches of grapes with their secateurs. Just like she was. Dropping them into the buckets at their feet and moving on to the next when they’d cleared a section. The other half of the group had started at the opposite end of the vineyard, working their way towards the middle.

Henry was manning one of the ATVs and one of John’s boys was collecting full buckets and throwing the grapes into the trailer, their progression up and down the vines painfully slow, stopping and starting every few metres. When the trailer was full, Henry would drive the load over to the distillery where people were already managing the sorting process: emptying the load into the vibrating hopper feeding the grapes into the destemmer which would then pour them onto a conveyor that lifted the grapes into the sorting machine.

Snip, snip, drop.