‘Oh nonsense!’ I retort crisply, deciding not to tell Ned that I have kicked his son into the long grass. I don’t mind Ned thinking that I am the best Jesse Marlon whisperer around. I am thinking that Ned is probably right. If anyone can be relied on to follow the money, Lulu can.

But then, I mull a little further, Lulu now considers herself to be a literary personage, and spends all dinner parties dropping the names of famous writers she’s invited to Godminster for debates and lectures and round-table discussions so that slow countryfolk can pick them up in wondering admiration. Also, divorce is invariably fatal for women. Even women as pretty and lissom as Lulu. So it’s not a done deal, either way.

‘She can’t divorce you, even though I don’t doubt it’s hard for her sharing the Hall with Celia, who isn’t –’ I pause delicately ‘–the easiest of mother-in-laws.’ (Celia Bryanston’s loathing of her daughter-in-law has, if anything, increased as the older woman sinks further in Lulu’s debt, as is predictable.) ‘The thing is, babes like Lulu can’t survive as single round here. Unattached women are treated by other women with as much compassion as farmers treat stray dogs, as if all they’re interested in is worrying other women’s husbands; they’re liable to be shot.’

At this Ned snorts, his shoulders relax, and he hands me a couple of sheets of A4 that are on his desk.

It’s an email, printed off.

‘And that’s not the only problem I have at the moment,’ he says.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Cc: [email protected], [email protected]

Dear Ned and Lulu,

I hesitated to write but I really feel I must. As an American, I do think that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so let’s get it over, without, I hope, putting any kind of crimp in our long friendship!

I’m sure that you’re acting with the best of good intentions and that you would never set out to hurt either me or Granville, or anyone else in Honeyborne. But this will, honest to goodness, be the inevitable result of the plan you outlined around my dining table.

I have thought plenty about this and I hope that you take a moment or two to consider this letter.

• We cannot accept your plan to put a windmill, with all the visual disruption that will necessarily result, on to Hamble Hill.

• We do not find the environmental case you have presented logical or compelling, especially given the output record of the windmill you are proposing to erect.