“You would be entitled to payment too of course.”

Lily’s hooded eyes flicked upwards. “Payment, you say?”

“Yes. Of course. For your co-operation.”

Lily’s small mouth puckered with deliberation. As she agonised over my request, my attention was drawn to a broken bread maker stashed in the far corner of the kitchen. Lily’s gaze followed mine. She stuck her chin out. “What are you looking at?”

“Your bread maker.”

Lily laced and unlaced her hands. “What about it?”

“It looks like it might be broken.”

Lily sniffed.

“I would make sure you were generously compensated so you could replace that and still have some money left over.”

She mentally chewed over my proposition. She glanced down at the slumbering Harley and back up at me. “And you promise there would be no impact on the interior of the house?”

“None at all. I would make it clear that the photoshoot was in the garden and nowhere else.”

Lily processed this. I could see conflict waging a war in her expression.

“You can trust me. One hundred percent.”

Lily made an agonised sigh. “All right,” she agreed after a few more moments, with a stiff nod of her thick silvery head. “You can use the gardens of Merry Wood for your magazine. But the inside of the house remains out of bounds. Is that clear?” She pursed her lips. “If there is so much as one plant trodden on in that garden, I will sue the lot of you and see if I don’t.”

I was so relieved and bouncing with excitement, I could have hugged her. But I didn’t. She wouldn’t have liked it. Instead, I thanked her so profusely, she told me to be quiet as I was making her uncomfortable.

Then she informed me she would make a fresh pot of tea.

“So, I thought about the metallic shadow on the models and having them pose like the statues beside them?”

Ebony, the make-up artist, nodded her braided hair at my suggestion. “I’ll make sure each of them has bare lips then. Make it all about their eyes and complexions.”

The garden of Merry Wood was throbbing with activity. Tall circular lights glowed like inquisitive eyes onto the grass. The three models were languishing in louche poses and the stylist and photographer were engaged in a heated discussion about “what constitutes fluidity and atmosphere”.

It was a frosty morning in mid-November with the winter sun spreading her golden paintbrush over the tips of the trees and weaving across the long grass.