He had joined the playing fields committee, the darts team at the pub, offered to play cricket for Long Farnden, even considered the reading group but decided it was a lot of old fogies reading romantic novels and not for him. He worked for an IT company in Tresham, and had yet to discover that Lois Meade’s son Douglas had a senior position in the same company. He was thirty-two years old, and had the confidence and cheek of the devil. In other words, as Derek had guessed, he was perfect for the task of raising a large sum of money for the village hall.

“How was it tonight?” asked his wife, as he came into their small cottage with a blast of cold air. Gavin had gone along to the meeting out of curiosity, rather fancying the idea that at some point he wouldn’t mind being a parish councillor himself. He was told that he could not speak unless prearranged with the secretary, but this had not bothered him unduly, nor stopped his interjections, and he was not overawed by Mrs. Tollervey-Jones.

“Much as usual,” he said. “I reckon nothing’s changed for the last fifty years. Some posh old dame is in the chair. The one who lives at Farnden Hall, I think. Talk about feudalism! You should have heard her keeping the unruly peasants in order!”

“So what did they talk about? Strip farming? Poaching in the squire’s woods?”

Kate Adstone was a small, dark-haired thirty-year-old, very dry and sharp. Their daughter Cecilia took all her time at the moment, but she intended to return to her job as a family mediator in due course.

“No, it was mostly about the proposed centenary celebrations for the crumbling village hall. We’ve talked about it in the pub, as you know, and I am all for bulldozing the old shed down and bringing the village up into the twenty-first century.”