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insufferably grand mother. Lady Julia was as determined as her daughter that Mullions should go on — as long as someone else did all the work. She was markedly less willing than Tally to struggle into waders to drag weeds out of the oxbow lake or crawl along the Jacobean lead gutters pulling leaves out to stop blockages. Even more useless was Tally's brother, Piers. He seemed to prefer spending all his time — including holidays — at Eton. She must remember, Jane thought, to tell Tally about the crusty in the paper who had looked so like her brother. Tally would be amused.
    Tally did not look amused, Jane thought, as the tall, grave-faced figure of her friend finally appeared in the wine bar. But she certainly looked amusing. What on
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    earth was she wearing? Tally had never exactly been a snappy dresser but even by her standards this was eccentric. As Tally threaded her way between the tables, Jane saw she had on what looked like an ancient, enormous and patched tweed jacket worn over an extremely short and glittery A-line dress.
    'You look amazing,' Jane said, truthfully, leaping up to kiss Tally's cold, soft, highly-coloured cheek. 'Is that vintage?' she asked, nodding at the dress which, at close range, looked extraordinarily well-cut and expensive, if a little old-fashioned.
    'Mummy's cast-offs, if that's what you mean,' Tally answered, slotting herself in under the table and stuffing what was left of the nuts into her mouth. All my clothes have fallen to bits now, so I've started on hers. I must say they're very well made. The stitches don't give an inch. When I was scraping the moss out of the drains yesterday—'
    'You surely didn't scrape them out wearing that? gasped Jane. 'It looks like Saint Laurent.'
    'Yes, it is, actually,' said Tally vaguely. 'But no, I wear her old Chanel for outdoor work. Much warmer. This glittery stuff's a bit scratchy.'
    'How is Mullions?' asked Jane. This usually was the cue for Tally to explode into rhapsodic enthusiasm about duck decoys and uncovering eighteenth-century graffiti during the restoration of the follies. This time, however, Tally's face fell, her lips trembled and, to Jane's dismay, her big, clear eyes filled up with tears. The end of her nose, always a slight Gainsborough pink against the translucent whiteness of the rest of her face, deepened to Schiaparelli. This, clearly, was what Tally wanted to talk about.
    'Whatever's happened?' Jane placed her warm hand over
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    Tally's bony cold one. Tally swallowed, pulled it away and tucked her thin light-brown hair behind her ears before lifting her reddened eyes to Jane.
    'Mummy,' Tally whispered. 'She's gone mad.'
    Jane frowned slightly. Was that all? But surely Julia had always had a screw loose? She had more than once, Jane remembered, sent Tally back to the new term at Cambridge with instructions to 'drive carefully back to Oxford, dear'. After her father had died, the horses in the carriage block had been the nearest Tally seemed to have to a stable family background.
    'How do you mean, mad, exactly?' asked Jane carefully.
    'Don't ask how it happened. I've no idea. But she says she spent a night sitting naked on top of a mountain in the Arizona desert and it changed her life,' choked Tally. Julia had, she explained to an amazed Jane, recently flown off on holiday in all her usual first-class, chignonned splendour and had returned a barefoot New Age hippy with her hair around her knees. 'And now she wants to go round the world and enlarge her horizons with Big Horn,' Tally finished.
    'What's that?' said Jane. 'A New Age travel company?'
    'Her new boyfriend.' Tally closed her eyes as if to block out the horror of it all. 'He's a Red Indian she met in Arizona. Only now he's living at Mullions. And he never says anything. Ever.'
    'What? said Jane. It couldn't be true. Lady Julia Venery, a New Age hippy? A woman whose idea of crystal therapy was looking at the window display of Tiffany's. And a Red Indian boyfriend?