Two sisters, Halcyon and Marguerite Days, after heated exchanges and months of debate, had put together the money left them by their father and bought Knight’s Fee, a house in Hope Wenlock, just on the English side of the Welsh Borders.

The house was timbered, roomy and, certainly on the outside, picturesque; “a jigsaw picture house”, it was described by the agents (a description which had for some time set Hassie against going to view it). What she had seen, when Margot’s persistence eroded her resistance, was a rambling redbrick building, covered in Virginia creeper, with a sprawling garden, invaded by weeds, yellow fungi, and clumps of brooding nettles. . .’