Mimi gazes out of the window. We are out of the town now, and winding uphill on the road that leads to Larcombe Ducis, and Honeyborne, a road I know so well I am not aware of taking it. ‘One of the nurses wheeled me to theatre. I was really looking forward to the anaesthetic, I love being sucked down into a brown treacly whirlpool, it’s so delicious, makes you realize why everyone says crack and heroin are so blissful.’ Mimi stops talking.

‘And was that it, till you came round in Recovery?’ I ask.

‘Pretty much,’ says Mimi, in a different voice. ‘I had a scan, and that was it.’ She puts her head back against the seat, and closes her eyes, as if she doesn’t want to talk about it any more. But I have to say something to her before she falls asleep and before I get her home.

‘Mimi, love,’ I say.

‘What?’ she says sleepily, looking out of the window at the green fields, the sheep, the houses, the lowering sky. It’s been the most torrential winter, and spring doesn’t seem to want to come at all. ‘I’m nodding off, Rose, sorry.’

‘I’m not surprised – the general anaesthetic, you’ve had such a horrid time…’ I say, changing gear as we go up a steep bit. ‘But I feel I have to tell you.’

‘What?’ Mimi says again, leaning her head against the glass, not looking at me.

‘Clare,’ I say.

‘What about her?’

‘Well, you remember, she showed up at the Dairy to talk to me about my business, and the commercial potential of smallholdings, and I thought she was coming the next week, and you were there?’

‘Of course I remember,’ says Mimi, in a hard voice. ‘As if I could forget.’

‘Well, she’s viewing Hutton too, well, the gatehouse – you know, owned by Sir Michael Hutton, it’s that house with the iron gates and the walled garden between us and Larcombe? She’s seeing it next week. She heard about it from some French woman in Notting Hill, who was apparently here the other weekend and staying at Court Place.’

‘Oh fuck Virginie,’ Mimi wails. ‘That little French dyke is nothing but trouble! I knew no good could come of it when she was at that dinner at the Cobbs’ – the Parmesan risotto one I told you all about, when Ned told everyone about the windfarm!’ There is a silence while she digests the information. ‘But the whole point about here is that it’s too far to come for weekends – that’s why it’s so special, of course! Gideon would never put up with six, seven hours in the car every weekend, he’s much too impatient. It would never work. And nothing around here is minimal or groovy enough for him. The ceilings are too low, and everything’s at least three hundred years old.’