Six days of limbo passed. Nothing else strange happened; everything just carried on, as if Ralph had been beamed up by aliens. He was officially a missing person, and the staff at Minstead spoke about it in huddles, with hushed anxious whispers.

‘I’m just going for lunch, OK?’ Meredith told Doris, who was sitting precariously on the high stool behind the cash register, polishing stained-glass window decorations. Her bald skull shone disconcertingly under the shop’s halogen spotlights, barely covered by a few remaining strands of candyfloss grey hair.

At eighty-three, Doris was by far the oldest and most doddery of the volunteers, but Meredith couldn’t let her go. She’d been volunteering a day a week since her husband died thirty years before and, like Ceri, would probably lose the will to live herself if she no longer had the anchor of Minstead House tethering her to this mortal coil.

Meredith felt another pang of sorrow at the thought of Ceri, who was out of her mind with worry that Ralph was missing. Since last Friday, she’d been mostly sitting at her desk outside his office, twisting rosary beads between her fingers and staring vacantly at her telephone.

‘Be careful on that stool. You know I worry about you up there,’ Meredith said.

Doris looked over her glasses at her. ‘I haven’t fallen off it yet,’ she said. ‘See you in half an hour. Have you got a hat? It’s sweltering out there.’

‘Good point.’ Meredith borrowed a branded baseball cap from the rack of merchandised apparel, and stuffed it in the bag with her foil-wrapped sandwich. ‘Call me if you need me.’

Doris wasn’t wrong. Opening the side door into the sunshine felt like walking into an oven, after the cool flagstone floors and air-conditioned shop. But the sun’s soft fingers stroking her face felt good. She strolled away from the house, through the wrought-iron arbour arch and into the rose garden, which was in full, insanely colourful bloom, an explosion of scent and pastel shades.

There weren’t many visitors about in the grounds – it was too hot, probably. They’d all be inside, their gazes sliding across boring oil paintings by minor eighteenth-century artists, and marquetry cabinets. It made Meredith smile that the words she heard most frequently when she walked through the public areas of the house were from children: ‘I’m bored. Can we go now?’