George, it turned out, had a wonderful way with words and by the time Sam, the landlord, and his partner, Tess, were getting ready to call time, he had held us all in his thrall for well over two hours. There had been laughter, tears and genuine fear induced by the collection of stories he had told and even though I got the impression that a fair number of the locals had heard them before, he had such a talent, he still managed to keep them gripped.

I had been so enraptured that I hadn’t noticed much of what was happening around me, but Wren’s gentle nudge brought me back to earth with a bump.

‘That was amazing,’ I told her as everyone clapped and George took a bow. ‘Although, I’m rather pleased I didn’t know about the ghosts of the lost lovers when I was growing up.’

‘Tragic that one,’ nodded Theo, who looked a little tipsy.

‘Totally,’ I agreed.

Ned nudged my other side, handed me Bandit’s lead and stood up.

‘Are you going to be all right getting him home?’ asked Wren, as we watched my companion try to negotiate the path back to the bar.

We both giggled as he failed to manage two steps in a straight line.

‘Oh crikey,’ I gasped, looking from him to the stacked up empty pint glasses on the table. ‘How many of these are Ned’s?’

‘All of them,’ said Wren. ‘And he’s not usually a more than a couple of pints man.’

There weren’t that many empties, but if he wasn’t used to more than two pints, then what was there was more than enough to make him feel every bit as tipsy as he looked.

‘Well,’ I said, biting my lip as I wondered how he’d fare with the stairs back at the lodge, ‘you did say you thought it would do him good to relax, didn’t you?’

The crisp winter air did nothing to sober Ned up and having sung a medley of Christmas classics, all out of tune, on the way home, I had a job to get the key code out of him when I pulled up at the gate. Eventually I parked the car, thanking her for getting us home, locked the gate, released Bandit and helped Ned out of his seat and on to the veranda.

‘You’ll have to let me go if you want me to open the door,’ I told him. ‘I can’t keep you upright and let us in, Ned.’

He was leaning heavily against me and it was all I could do to stay on my feet and not crumble under his weight. Not that I would have minded finding myself under him, but it was a cold night and besides, I wasn’t supposed to be entertaining illicit thoughts like those.