And now the chair was in his study, and Helena Haverland, née Cressett, was his housekeeper, and if she remembered that first childhood encounter she never mentioned it, nor did he. He had used the whole of his grandfather’s legacy to purchase the Manor and had planned to maintain it by converting the west wing into a private clinic, spending from Monday to Wednesday each week in London, operating on his NHS patients and those in his private beds at St. Angela’s, and returning to Stoke Cheverell on Wednesday nights. The work of adapting the wing was done sensitively; the changes were minimal. The wing was a twentieth-century restoration following an earlier replacement in the eighteenth century, and no other original part of the Manor had been touched. Staffing the clinic had never been a problem; he knew whom he wanted and was prepared to pay over the odds to get them. But staffing the operating suite had proved easier than staffing the Manor. The months while he awaited planning consent and when the work was in progress presented no problem. He camped in the Manor, often with the house to himself, looked after by an elderly cook, the only member of the Cressett staff, apart from the gardener, Mogworthy, who stayed on. He looked back now on that year as one of the most contented and happiest that he had ever known. He rejoiced in his possession, moving daily in the silence from the great hall to the library, from the long gallery to his rooms in the east wing with a quiet, undiminished triumph. He knew that the Manor couldn’t hope to rival the magnificent great hall or the gardens of Athelhampton, the breathtaking beauty of the setting of Encombe, or the nobility and history of Wolfeton. Dorset was rich in great houses. But this was his place and he wanted no other.

The problems began after the clinic had opened and the first patients arrived. He advertised for a housekeeper but, as acquaintances in similar need had prophesied, none proved satisfactory. The old servants from the village whose forebears had worked for the Cressetts were not seduced from old loyalties by the high wages offered by the interloper. He had thought that his secretary in London would have time to cope with the bills and bookkeeping. She hadn’t. He had hoped that Mogworthy, the gardener now relieved by an expensive firm who came in weekly to cope with the heavy work, would condescend to help more in the house. He wouldn’t. But the second advertisement for a housekeeper, this time differently placed and worded, had produced Helena. She had, he remembered, interviewed him rather than he her. She said that she was recently divorced, independent with a flat in London, but wanted something to do while she considered her future. It would be interesting to return, even temporarily, to the Manor.

She had returned six years ago and was still there. Occasionally he wondered how he would manage when she decided to leave, which she would probably do as unfussily and determinedly as she had arrived. But he was too busy. There were problems, some of his own making, with the theatre sister, Flavia Holland, and with his assistant surgeon, Marcus Westhall, and although by nature a planner, he had never seen sense in anticipating a crisis. Helena had recruited her old governess, Letitia Frensham, as a bookkeeper. She was presumably either a widow or divorced or separated, but he made no enquiry. The accounts were meticulously kept, in the office order was produced out of chaos. Mogworthy ceased his irritating threats to resign and became accommodating. Part-time staff from the village became mysteriously available. Helena said that no good cook would tolerate the kitchen and, ungrudgingly, he provided the money required for its upgrading. Fires were lit, flowers and greenery found for the rooms in use, even in the winter. The Manor became alive.