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Angela before he went away to business school and agreeing to a chaste, three-year engagement at the Flynn family’s insistence. Even after he founded Cranley Estates at only twenty years old, backed by MacQuarie Bank, then dropped out of business school and became a multimillionaire almost overnight, Angela’s family held firm. They finally married on Angela’s twenty-first birthday, not a day before, in a tiny local church in Canberra.
    The bride wore white.
    It was the happiest day of Brett Cranley’s life.
    ‘You’d better get dressed,’ Michelle said, matter-of-factly.
    She was back in PA mode now, as if the sex had never happened, scrolling through the rest of the day’s agenda on her Samsung phone while Brett lay sprawled out naked on the carpet with his arms and legs outstretched, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man.
    ‘The guy from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s gonna be here in ten minutes.’
    ‘Oh, God. Really?’
    ‘Really. And I don’t think those are the assets he’s interested in, do you?’ She looked down at her boss’s wilting dick and grinned broadly.
    ‘I certainly hope not.’ Brett grinned back, feeling happier by the minute that he’d hired this girl. If they didn’t give him an ‘Investor in People’ award next year, there’d be no justice in the world. ‘Be an angel and hand me my clothes, would you? And call down and order a pot of tea for … what’s his name, the GSAM bloke?’
    ‘Kingham. Anthony Kingham. Will do.’
    Brett had forgotten completely about the Goldman meeting. He must be tireder than he thought. He’d have liked to cancel, but it was too late now.
    Never mind. The call to Angela and the kids would have to wait.

CHAPTER THREE
    Max Bingley walked down Fittlescombe High Street with a spring in his step.
    ‘Good morning, Mrs Preedy!’
    The village shopkeeper’s wife smiled and waved. She was wearing an old-fashioned apron with deep front pockets and had a wicker basket, filled incongruously with leeks, under one arm. She reminded Max of Mrs Honeyman, the village gossip from Camberwick Green , a 1960s children’s programme made with puppets that he and his younger brothers used to watch as kids. There was something wonderfully innocent and timeless about Fittlescombe that regularly took Max back to earlier, happier times. The Preedys’ shop was at the heart of it all, along with the excellent village pub, The Fox.
    ‘Enjoying the break, Mr Bingley?’
    Mrs Preedy had unloaded her leeks into a crate of fresh vegetables outside the front door of the shop and was now polishing apples with the front of her apron.
    ‘I am indeed. Hard not to with such lovely weather.’
    It was indeed a perfect day, blue-skied and warm for May, with the faintest hint of breeze carrying the scent of honeysuckle and early flowering jasmine on the air. Half-term had run late this year, and school wasn’t due to start again for another week, so the unexpected sunshine was an added boon. Max Bingley was thoroughly enjoying his new job as headmaster of St Hilda’s Primary School, and didn’t mind the idea of going back. But nothing could quite beat a week’s walking and fishing in the glorious Downs countryside. Not for the first time, Max said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d had the good sense to take the St Hilda’s job when it was offered to him.
    When Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster of over twenty-five years, unexpectedly announced his retirement last year, and the governors approached Max about the position, he found himself on the receiving end of a relentless campaign by his daughters to accept the job. Max had been depressed since his wife, their mother, had died two years earlier.
    ‘You need a fresh start, Dad,’ said Rosie, now in her fourth year of medical school at Cambridge. ‘The Swell Valley is supposed to be ridiculously beautiful.’
    ‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a