‘I wonder what the cause of his stroke was,’ she said. A debilitating stroke being one of the many varied and exciting side effects of practising magic. ‘You know if there was a bunch of posh kids learning magic, some of them are bound to have done themselves an injury at some point. Maybe we should ask Dr Walid to look for strokes and stuff amongst our suspect pool.’

‘You must really like paperwork.’

The doors opened and we navigated our way out into the freezing car park.

‘That’s how you catch villains, Peter,’ said Lesley. ‘By doing the legwork.’

I laughed and she punched me in the arm.

‘What?’ she asked,

‘I really missed you when you weren’t around,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ she said, and was quiet all the way back to the Folly.

We weren’t surprised to find that Nightingale hadn’t made it back from Henley or that Molly was haunting the entrance waiting for him to return. Toby bounced around my legs as I headed for the private dining room where Molly had optimistically set the table for two. For the first time since I’d moved in, a fire had been lit in the fireplace. I went back out onto the balcony and spotted Lesley heading for the stairs up to her room.

‘Lesley,’ I called. ‘Wait up.’

She stopped and looked at me, her face a mask of dirty pink.

‘Come and have dinner,’ I said. ‘You might as well, otherwise it will just go to waste.’

She glanced up the stairs and then back at me. I know the mask itches and that she was probably dying to get up to her room and get it off.

‘I’ve seen your face,’ I said. ‘So has Molly. And Toby doesn’t give a shit as long as he gets a sausage.’ Toby barked on cue. ‘Just take the fucking thing off – I hate eating on my own.’

She nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said and started up the stairs.

‘Hey!’ I called after her.

‘I’ve got to moisturise, you pillock,’ she called back.

I looked down at Toby who scratched his ear.

‘Guess who’s coming to dinner,’ I said.

Molly, stung perhaps by the amount of takeaway we ate in the coach house, had started to experiment. But tonight, probably for comfort, she’d reached back into the classics. All the way back to ye olde Englande in fact.

‘It’s venison in cider,’ I said. ‘She had it soaking overnight. I know because I went down looking for a snack last night and the fumes nearly knocked me out.’