Kerensa was in the manor gardens, playing a hide and seek game with Samuel. She had hidden three tin soldiers under the bushes and he was running about, squeaking with delight as he looked for them.

‘Be careful you don’t scratch your face on the twigs,’ she called to him. The two soldiers he had already found were in her hand. He was taking a long time finding the third and for several seconds she had not heard his excited voice.

‘Sam? Samuel, where are you? Shout to Mama. Do you want me to help you?’

The silence continued. She listened for him. There was the sound of Beatrice bawling at someone in the kitchen. Clip, clip. An under-gardener was trimming an ornamental hedge round the side of the house. Next came a bark from Rex. But no answer from Samuel.

‘Sam! Tell Mama where you are.’

She weaved her way in and out of the shrubs, darting round to the rose garden, back again to the rug, where the rest of his toys lay forsaken. The garden furniture, where they were shortly to have tea together, before he went up for his bath in the nursery, was undisturbed. ‘Sam!’

Panic rose in her. Her youngest son was wilful at times and would often hide away, but he had never kept quiet this long.

She tore off to find him, was about to shout his name again when she heard his voice, loud and excited and chuckling with gusto. Wherever he had wandered off to, he was now only on the other side of a massive hydrangea. She ran round it.

‘There you are—’ she stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh, you’re with Papa, I thought you’d got lost.’

Oliver was crouching down, tickling his son, the reason for the chuckles. Samuel liked to play rough and suddenly whacked his father on the head. Kerensa laughed and Oliver laughed, pretending it hurt him.

‘Right then, you little ruffian.’ Lifting him up high above his head, Oliver whirled Samuel round and round until, quite breathless, he set the boy on his shoulders.

‘He’s the roughest and the toughest of our brood,’ Oliver said to Kerensa. ‘Don’t you think?’

He was looking at her with his great dark eyes, a soft look, studying her. Alert to what his intentions might be, she answered, ‘It’s true to say he wears me out more quickly than the others.’

Samuel held out the third soldier to Kerensa. ‘Ah, clever boy.’

‘You’ve been playing hiding the soldiers. Kane and Luke both liked that game. You are well, Kerensa?’

She walked round the bush to the rug and Oliver kept pace with her.

‘Yes, thank you. How went it for Olivia with Mr Spears? I’ve been on tenterhooks all day for her. Have you come with news?’