He lives in Stable Cottage.

Henry Pike: the Master of Foxhounds, lunger, toper, shagger and the only resident of Honeyborne who is allowed to enter the Stores on horseback.

Biddy Pike: his Boden-clad wife and stalwart of many Pony Club Summer Camps.

Flavia (Flaves) Pike and Harry Pike are their two never knowingly unhorsed children.

The Pikes live at Lower Foxcombe with their terriers, Jiggy and Frisky.

Mr and Mrs Hitchens: master and mistress of the village Post Office and Stores (aka the gossip-interchange).

Garry and Debbie: publicans of The Stag, in which they serve locals with slopping pints of Badger Ale and keep a wolf.

Dr Ashburton: GP who hunts, grunts and reluctantly runs the surgery in his spare time.

Esmond d’Oplinter: aka the Bonking Baron, a courtly Frenchman married to the defiantly hideous Jacqueline, his even more aristocratic wife. They live in Paris but shoot in the West Country twice a year.

Revd Wyldbore-Smith: vicar of St Mary of All Angels and the go-to man if you want to secure a plot in the graveyard. He lives in The Rectory.

PART ONE

Mimi

I’m sitting in the kitchen, only warm place in the house.

I have a pint of coffee in my Thermos (bought from the Wild Bean Café at service station, price of latte redeemed against price of cup) to my right, and am reading the paper. Calypso is lying pressed against my feet, which are – I’m ashamed to report –inserted into my exciting new fake-fur electric footwarmer with dual-setting massager which I ordered off the Argos website during one of my more recent online shopping jags. (I easily justify the regular delivery of squishy parcels addressed to me by telling myself there are no normal shops – i.e. ones selling Swarovski-crystal-encrusted designer jeans, organic hemp baby-clothes, Elle MacPherson Intimates – within a hundred-mile radius of Home Farm. Works for me.)

The radio is on, and I am half listening to a report on shea butter made by a women’s collective in Northern Ghana on Woman’s Hour.

Inside the footwarmer, I am wearing my favourite cashmere socks from Brora, sadly tiger-striped from having been dried and scorched on the Aga.

I am also ‘working’ some long johns, last year’s ‘boyfriend’ jeans (skinny jeans are so over, according to Mirabel, which is a relief), an M&S merino thermal vest, army surplus jersey, a scarf and a quilted padded waistcoat in army green with brass popper buttons of the type that used to be seen, in the days, on Lady Diana before she became Princess of Wales.

Yes, I am wearing a Husky.

Like tapestry-patterned hand-knitted cardigans with toggles, crewelwork, English teeth, women in rugby shirts tucked into fractionally too tight high-waisted jeans, the Conservative Party, and Grow the Longest Carrot contests, Huskys have never gone out of fashion outside built-up areas.

I am taking full advantage of this reassuring fact.

The telephone.

‘Hello?’ I say, powering up my laptop so I can multitask while taking the call.