The note of contempt in his voice had been like a slap across the face. Dean wished he wasn’t standing there unsupported, vulnerable, diminished, that there was a chair-back, something solid that he could grip to help control this surging tumult of anger, resentment and despair. But Carlos was right. That summons to the office hadn’t been unexpected. He had been dreading it for months. He made one more appeal. He said, “I’d like to stay on, at least until we find somewhere to go.”

“Suits me. Haven’t I told you you’ve got the makings of a bloody good chef?”

Of course he would stay on. The restaurant plan might be fading, but they had to eat.

Kim had left at the end of the week, and it was two weeks later to the day that they saw the advertisement for a married couple—cook and assistant cook—at Cheverell Manor. The day of the interview had been a Tuesday in mid-June of the previous year. They had been instructed to take a train from Waterloo to Wareham, where they would be met. Looking back, it seemed to Dean that they had travelled in a trance, being borne onwards with no consent of will through a verdant and magical landscape to a distant and unimaginable future. Looking at Kim’s profile against the rise and fall of the telegraph wires and, later, the green fields and hedges beyond, he longed for this extraordinary day to end well. He hadn’t prayed since childhood, but found himself silently reciting the same desperate petition. “Please, God, make it all right. Please don’t let her be disappointed.”

Turning to him as they approached Wareham, she said, “You’ve got the references safe, darling?” She had asked about them every hour.

At Wareham, a Range Rover was waiting in the forecourt with a stocky elderly man at the wheel. He didn’t get out but beckoned them over. He said, “You’ll be the Bostocks, I’m thinking. My name’s Tom Mogworthy. No luggage? No, there wouldn’t be, would there? You’ll not be staying. Climb in the back, then.”

It wasn’t, thought Dean, a propitious welcome. But that hardly mattered when the air smelled so sweet and they were being driven through such beauty. It was a perfect summer day, the sky azure and cloudless. Through the open windows of the Range Rover, a cooling breeze fell on their faces, not strong enough even to stir the delicate branches of the trees or rustle the grasses. The trees were in full leaf, still with the freshness of spring, their branches not yet stagnant with the dusty heaviness of August. It was Kim who, after ten minutes of a silent drive, leaned forward and said, “Do you work at Cheverell Manor, Mr. Mogworthy?”

“I’ve been there for just on forty-five years. Started as a boy in the grounds, clipping the knot garden. Still do. Sir Francis was the owner then, and after him Sir Nicholas. You’ll be working for Mr. Chandler-Powell now, if the women take you on.”