‘Always a good plan,’ Annie agreed. ‘How old is she?’

‘Sixteen.’

He picked up a dish cloth and, having dried the frames, began to polish the lenses.

‘In that case, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter. She can’t leave school until she’s seventeen.’

‘I know that. You know that. Which may go some way to explain why she went to so much trouble to get herself suspended from her boarding school.’

Annie frowned. ‘She’s at boarding school?’

‘Dower House.’

‘I see.’

She could sympathise with her father’s lack of enthusiasm at her career choice after he’d sent her to one of the most expensive boarding schools in the country. The kind that turned out female captains of industry, politicians, women who changed the world. The school where, two years ago, she’d given the end-of-year address to the girls, had presented the prizes.

She clearly hadn’t made that much of an impression on young Xandra Saxon. Or maybe the haircut was worse than she thought.

‘Obviously she’s not happy there.’

‘I wanted the best for her. I live in the States and, as you may have gathered, her mother is easily distracted. It seems that she’s on honeymoon at the moment.’

‘Her third,’ Annie said, remembering what Xandra had said.

‘Second. We didn’t have one. I was a first-year student with a baby on the way when we got married.’

‘That must have been tough,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t much fun for either of us,’ he admitted. ‘Penny went home to her mother before Xandra was due and she never came back. I don’t blame her. When I wasn’t studying, I was working every hour just to keep us fed and housed. It wasn’t what she’d expected from the son of George Saxon.’