Ophelia studied the older man in utter bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘It has been brought to my attention that twelve years ago your grandfather sold the walled garden and the three fields beside it to a local farmer. Your grandmother appears not to have appreciated that the walled garden was included in the sale.’

Twelve years earlier, Ophelia hadn’t even been living at Madrigal Court because her mother had still been alive. ‘Of course, I knew that those fields were sold off ages ago…but the walled garden can’t have been sold with them.’

‘I didn’t handle the sale, but I have copies of the documents here and I can assure you that it was part of the parcel.’ The solicitor explained that the farmer’s son had intended to open a market-gardening business, but when he had died unexpectedly the walled garden had been left undisturbed because his father had had no use for it.

Ophelia listened in mounting consternation. The Metaxis estate had bought out the farmer four years earlier and had somehow overlooked the fact that the walled garden formed part of the acquisition.

She honestly felt as though she had had a giant rock dropped on her from on high. ‘You’re telling me that I’ve been trespassing on someone else’s land for almost five years? That Lysander Metaxis legally owns my garden?’

‘And anything you have built within those walls.’

Pale as milk, Ophelia nodded like a marionette, while the solicitor expressed his sympathy for her position while advising her that there was nothing whatsoever she could do about it.

In a daze Ophelia drove straight to the walled garden, or at least she tried. The Metaxis estate installed swanky green farm gates at all the entrances onto their land. Such a gate was already in the process of being erected at the foot of the lane that led up to the walled garden. She drove past the workmen and leapt out of her vehicle outside the mellow brick walls that surrounded the nursery. She was shocked to see that the tall wrought-iron gates were now padlocked shut, barring her from the garden that was the living result of years of her dreams and her work.