‘Hold on, Mr Hollis. Either she’s not working hard enough or well enough – which is it?’

‘One’s no different to the other, in my book. Result’s the same.’

‘You have to set the standards for her, then she’ll follow.’

‘Mr Mayhood doesn’t pay me to be nursing them through simple bits of work. They’re your apprentices, not mine.’

‘All right, I can see your point on that one.’ They’d approached the neighbour’s door. A soppy-looking dog came running up to meet them and she’d crouched to give its fur a ruffle. ‘I’ll raise it with my husband, see what he advises.’

‘Did that yesterday. It got me nowhere.’

She’d almost smirked. ‘Well, Arthur is a fair man, as you know, and sometimes it’s about how sensibly you make your argument. I’ll mention it again.’

If anybody cared for his opinion on the subject, Mr Mayhood was a very lucky man to have a wife as capable and handsome as she was. Even as a young girl, playing in the waiting room of Mr Greaves’s place, she’d been a cheerful little thing; he’d seen her bring a smile from men in blinding agony, who’d come in to get wisdom teeth yanked out and cavities filled in. In her teens, she’d sat at the reception desk in summer, reading books and drawing pictures, opening the post and fixing the appointments. There were lads her age he’d known to fake a toothache just so they could go and talk to her a moment. So he couldn’t understand why Mr Mayhood wasn’t doing everything he could to keep her safe. Letting her go round the country buying tractor parts. Who knows what sort of crooked fella she might come across?

For months now, he’d been pestering them both to get a farm dog – not a mawkish thing like next-door were content with, but a proper German shepherd or Jack Russell terrier; a smarter breed that you could train. But they didn’t even have a cat at Leventree for catching rodents, because Mr Mayhood was allergic. With no dog to bark or any shotguns in the house, they were making themselves vulnerable. He must’ve said as much to Mr Mayhood fifty times, but the answer always came back no: ‘I gave up firing guns in Holland, thank you, and I won’t go back to it. Besides, we can’t keep weapons in the house – it’s a condition of their borstal licence.’ Only a few weeks ago, they’d gone out on a recce of the driveway because Florence had found someone pissing in the bracken on her way back home. He couldn’t quite recall the bloke himself, but Mr Mayhood thought it might’ve been some scrounger who’d come by the place in June. They’d done a full sweep of the drive, the verges, the entire copse, and found no sign of anybody tresspassing. There’d been a few big footprints in the dirt, that’s all, but they’d been right where Florence said she’d seen the bloke the first time, near the gate. Mr Mayhood’s final judgement had been: ‘We should keep an eye out, but I don’t think we’ve any grounds to be concerned about the fella now.’ Hollis had stayed watchful, and the only oddity he’d noticed since was Tweedledum.