‘No, I think I might go mad or burst or something if I don’t talk about it and I need an outside view. You’re the perfect person, because you know about the characters in the drama without having actually been involved. Let’s have a drink. What would you like? Wine or something stronger? I hardly ever drink spirits but I’m going to have whisky tonight.’

‘Wine would be fine for me.’ Louisa kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa and Isobel, once she had fetched their drinks, found herself going back to the time five years before when she and Giles had just finished converting Glendrochatt as an arts centre and were about to start their first season. Lorna, newly divorced from her South African husband, had arrived, uninvited, to spend the summer with them, announcing that she intended to help them get the new project off the ground.

‘She said she had nowhere to go – not strictly true – and we’d just been let down by a newly appointed assistant administrator and were desperate for more help. Lorna’s incredibly efficient but even so I was terribly against her staying,’ said Isobel. ‘I knew she’d cause trouble but it seemed too difficult to refuse under the circumstances. And my God! Did she excel herself! She’s always had a genius for putting other people in the wrong and quite soon she’d practically taken over the place and set us all at odds with each other . . . not just Giles and me, but the wonderful staff we had working for us at the time – even the children. Well, especially the children really. Amy and Edward hated her from the word go. Amy because she tried to interfere over her music – playing her fiddle had always been Amy’s special, happy bond with Giles – and Edward because Lorna completely terrified him. I know Ed’s not easy and I’ve learned to accept how difficult some people find it to know how to react to any kind of handicap, mental or physical – well, it is difficult. I’ve often found it hard myself, but since Ed was a tiny baby Lorna was never able to disguise her distaste for him whenever she saw him. Luckily that wasn’t very often because she lived so far away but it always hurt.’