‘Don’t ask me,’ Sir Michael Hutton replies, instantly. ‘And anyway, it’s water under the bridge, now, isn’t it? Ned, I think you missed the shock announcement then, at the end of the meeting, about the hunting case? You shot off, didn’t you? Case dismissed. So the video – whoever shot it, and whoever sent it – is history. The Crown’s dropped the case. There’s some technicality.’

‘Goodness,’ says Ned, faintly. He looks confused. ‘But why did this woman Sophy want to…’ It is clear that Ned has no idea about the rape story, and neither of us wants to enlighten him. He is interrupted by Sir Michael, who has risen to his feet and is looking down at us.

‘So everyone should be very grateful to you, Ned. You’ve been a jolly good egg to abandon ship on that infernal plan for a windmill. And you’re a jolly good egg, too, to let the hippies live on your land, and grant them a living on it too, if you really do go ahead with this coppicing idea. Frankly, the Bryanston family is coming up smelling of roses all round, and I’m sure this nonsense about Jesse Marlon will be over in a jiffy. Jolly good! And now, I really MUST go.’

Pierre arrives, and picks me up. ‘What was all that about?’ he asks, when we’re in the car.

‘I’m still trying to work it out myself,’ I answer. I think I followed most of what went on in the Farmers’ Bar, but I can’t be sure.

I try to explain it to Pierre. ‘It seems that Sophy might or might not have been raped, and it wasn’t by Colin Watts, it was more likely to have been Jesse Marlon’ – I hurry past my mention of Jesse Marlon, and Pierre does not detain me for further questioning, which is decent of him – ‘and she has sent the police something in a parcel that proves something one way or the other and, meanwhile, there’s to be no windmill on Hamble Hill, no jail for Martin and Henry, and the Spodders are going to make some money by selling biofuels to Godminster Hall.’

‘Well, I can only be grateful that I at least wasn’t involved,’ is my husband’s response.

One Week Later

I go to the Haybarn (the spa at the Brambletye) with Lulu and Mimi.

As soon as we all received our invitations to the wedding, so stiff I could keep it in the car to scrape ice off my windscreen with, Mimi and I knew we had only a short time, a matter of days, to make up for years of neglect. So we have a whole day of female admin – legs, toes, fingers, hair, bikini, moustaches and so on – ahead of us before the wedding in order that Mimi and I can come anywhere near Lulu’s level of presentation and grooming.