To my intense disappointment my grandfather was not at home. Neither was the widow next door with whom he had developed a close friendship. If Granddad had been on the phone, I could have saved myself the trip. But the idea of telephone communication hadn’t exactly reached darkest Essex yet. I was standing in Granddad’s front garden, under the disapproving stare of those gnomes, not sure what to do next, when an elderly man walked past with an elderly dog on a leash. He looked at me then shook his head.

“He ain’t there, love. He’s gone.” (He pronounced it “gawn.”)

“Gone? Where?” I asked in alarm as visions of hospitals or worse swam into my head. Granddad’s health had not been too brilliant recently.

“Down Clacton.”

I had no idea what a Clacton was or how one went down it. “Down Clacton?” I repeated hopefully.

He nodded. “Yeah. Workingmen’s club outing. In the charabanc. Her next door went with him.” And he gave me a knowing wink. I let out a sigh of relief. An outing. In a coach. Probably to the seaside. So even my grandfather was managing to escape the heat. I had no choice but to take the train back to the city. All my friends had deserted London for their country estates, their yachts or the Continent, and here I was, feeling hot and increasingly despondent in a carriage full of sweaty bodies.

“What am I doing here?” I asked myself. I had no skills, no hope of employment and no idea where to turn next. Nobody with any sense and money stayed in London during the month of August. And as for Darcy, the wild son of an Irish peer whom I thought was my current boyfriend . . . I hadn’t heard from him since he disappeared yet again, ostensibly to go home to Ireland to recover from his gunshot wound. This might be true, or it might not. With Darcy one never knew.

Of course I could go home to Scotland, I told myself, as the air in the tube train became stifling. The memory of the cold wind sweeping down the loch and the equally cold drafts sweeping down the corridors of Castle Rannoch was sorely tempting as I rode the escalator up from St. James’s tube station, dabbing ineffectively at the beads of sweat trickling down my face. And yes, I know ladies don’t sweat, but something was running down my face in great rivulets.