‘I don’t know,’ said Giles. ‘I really do not know. But whatever happens you will be consulted – that’s a promise – and you’ll need to think carefully about your own answers.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘And I’m very sorry, Amy darling – more sorry than I can say – that actions of mine should have put us all in such an impossible position . . . but as Mum keeps telling me, it’s not Rory’s fault. Don’t say anything more now, but please think about what I’ve said.’

Amy got off the swing and came and stood beside him. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ She slipped her hand in his and gave it a quick little squeeze before pulling away again. ‘I will brood about it . . . but I wish it didn’t all have to be so difficult.’

‘Yes,’ he said feelingly. ‘So do I.’

She said: ‘It was good fun playing together last night, wasn’t it?’

‘Terrific. Like old times. We always made a great team, didn’t we?’

Suddenly she grinned at him. ‘Guess what?’ she asked. ‘I’m absolutely starving!’

‘Then let’s go and see if they’ve left us any ham,’ said Giles.

And they walked back up the hill together.

Chapter Twenty

Marnie woke early on Sunday morning to a feeling of contentment, after the best night’s sleep she’d had for ages.

She lay in bed, drowsily savouring this sensation of well-being, conscious of being exactly the right temperature, of the softness of the pillows and the warmth and lightness of the duvet; watching pale sunlight slant across the wall and the curtains sway gently at the open window. A positive orchestra of birds was serenading outside. She could hear a wood pigeon’s soothing, monotonous coo from somewhere near, while a pair of oyster-catchers, screeching urgently in the distance, sounded like para-medics speeding along with alarm bells ringing. She could identify the outpourings of blackbird and thrush and a particularly vociferous wren – that smallest of musicians which has the decibels of an amplified timpanist at its disposal; she could hear a willow warbler fluting diminuendos in the garden and picked out the demanding teacher-teacher call of a great tit. From the other side of the courtyard, Don Quixote, Edward’s bombastic cockerel, was noisily greeting the new day. Not all visitors to Glendrochatt appreciated the Don’s dawn reveille and there had been curmudgeonly complaints from Stanley at breakfast on the first day, but on this particular Sunday morning it sounded delightful to Marnie.

The crowing cock triggered old memories and in her drowsy state she wondered what other sounds were missing. Surely there ought to be the bleating of goats and the braying of a donkey in the background – and instead of the great tit and the wren there should have been a pearly-eyed thrasher singing chocky, chocky, chocky from a frangipani tree.