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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘SO YOU’RE leaving for Cheshire this evening. Exactly when do your parents sail?’ Peter asked.

      They were having lunch at their usual restaurant, equidistant from Elspeth’s bank and Peter’s chambers. Both of them had agreed early on in their relationship that it made much more sense for them to fix a couple of days per week when they could lunch together, rather than committing too many of their precious busy evenings to developing their relationship.

      That was one of the things that made their relationship so harmonious: they both had the same goals, the same outlook on life—the same firm and practical outlook. Not for them the heady, and so often destructive and exhausting passion of others. Which made it all the more difficult to understand why her parents, instead of approving of Peter, seemed almost to treat their relationship as a joke.

      Of course, her parents and Peter were worlds apart; her parents were her parents, but one had to admit they were a trifle unorthodox in their attitude to the things that Peter considered important—one could almost say a little careless and feckless in their outlook on life, never treating it with the seriousness they should. Look at the way now that her father, having sold the farm and bought a smallholding, instead of investing the remainder of the money in some safe manner which would give them a good income, was insisting on taking her mother off to Egypt and then the Greek islands for a two-month holiday.

      Really, the pair of them could be as irrational and as irresponsible as a pair of children at times. It was a good job that she was around to keep an eye on them. When her father had first sold the farm, she had heaved a small sigh of relief. She loved her parents, of course, but the farm and its demands had sometimes proved to be a small bone of contention between Peter and herself. The very first time she had introduced him to her parents, he had generously tried to point out to her father how foolish he was in trying to continue farming in the outdated traditional method her father had favoured, when he could have made the farm so much more profitable by using modern intensive methods. Peter had only been trying to help, and it had been unfortunate that her father felt so strongly about retaining the traditional methods of agriculture, and that Peter hadn’t realised that he had been treading almost on hallowed ground by arguing against them.

      When her mother had first told her they were selling the farm, she had been pleased, envisaging a safe, comfortable life for them in a pleasant, easily run house in one of the very attractive local Cheshire villages, but to her shock what her parents had bought was a small and extremely run-down smallholding, which they had told her with enthusiasm and excitement they intended to use to raise organically grown vegetable crops.

      Her mother, Elspeth remembered, had been bubbling over with eagerness for the project, explaining that they had already canvassed the very popular local restaurants, with which Cheshire was well supplied, to ensure that there was a ready market for their produce.

      Elspeth had been dragged down to view the appalling wreck of a cottage, which looked fit only for demolition, and the flat, overgrown paddock that went with it.

      She had tried to talk her parents out of such a crazy venture, her heart sinking when she’d realised they had made up their minds. The frustration of not being able to make them see that their money would give them a far better return if it was invested had sent her to live in London with a pounding headache, and the unpleasant sinking sensation that Peter would consider her to have failed in not persuading them to change their minds. Why couldn’t her parents be more like Peter’s? His father and mother had retired to a small south coast town, where they played golf and bridge. They had an immaculate detached bungalow with smooth green lawns and well-disciplined flower-beds. No pets were allowed in the Holmes household, no cats with unexpected litters of kittens, no rough stray dogs with large muddy paws and hairy coats…no parrots who called out the most appallingly rude things when one was least expecting it. She still blushed to remember how, the first time she had taken Peter home, the parrot which her mother had originally been taking care of for a friend, and which had somehow or other lingered on to become a permanent house guest, had flown on to Peter’s shoulder and bitten quite sharply at his ear before remarking in a voice which sounded uncomfortably like her mother’s, ‘Oh, dear, such a shame. Pious Peter…Pious Peter…’

      ‘Well, perhaps once they get back from this holiday they’ll come to see sense and sell up. I must say, Elspeth, I do find your parents rather…’ Peter frowned and studied his plate as though unable to find the words to describe his reaction to her family, while Elspeth hung her head in acknowledgement of his criticism.

      It wasn’t until she had come to live in London that she had realised how eccentric and unusual her home life was. Having a father who was a farmer had caused a few amused raised eyebrows, but not too much other comment in the high-powered world of merchant banking. It was only after she’d made the mistake of taking a colleague home with her one Christmas that she’d made the humiliating discovery of how very odd and amusing her family was to others.

      She had reacted instinctively on learning that Sophy, the other girl, had had nowhere to spend Christmas, inviting her to return to Cheshire with her, knowing quite well that another body would hardly be noticed in the crowd that her mother always drew around her. Having produced only one child, her mother had gone on to make up for this by maternally adopting every chance waif and stray she could, both of the human and animal varieties, and so it was that the farm had abounded with pet lambs turned aggressive