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meetings were no longer accidental. They greeted each other, walked the remaining short distance, then bought far more than they wanted as a way of placating Mr. Patel (who had no intention of closing down, but put out the rumors periodically for commercial reasons). Then they repaired together to the White Hart for coffee and biscuits.
    â€œHas the rector’s wife been in touch?” Jack asked.
    â€œJust a phone call. Said she wanted to talk to me about these new events and attractions she’s planning. I felt like saying, ‘There’s months to go!’”
    â€œOh, things have to be prepared, to mature slowly. But it’s good they’re involving you.”
    â€œSay it how you mean it, Jack: it’s good that I’m being accepted, that’s what you’re thinking.”
    Jack let fly, and as usual took no notice of sound or smell.
    â€œWell, something like that.”
    â€œIt’s rather touching your caring so much—more than I do.”
    â€œI see shifting the fete as a sort of symbol. And you’ll be much better as the host than I or Meta ever were.”
    Caroline smiled a worldly-wise smile.
    â€œI suppose it comes from playing lady-of-the-manor roles in highly forgettable drawing-room comedies. Not that Alderley is a manor, quite. Still, it’s a lovely old house and the largest one I’ve ever lived in!”
    â€œYou should have seen the real manor,” said Jack with a sigh. “People don’t realize how much I miss it. You could get away from people there. Still, no point in regrets. If you can’t keep it up, and no one has a use for it, then it has to go. Yes, Alderley’s a nice house.”
    â€œI always feel it should have alder trees in the garden. Maybe it once did.”
    Jack shot her a glance.
    â€œOh no. It was always called Hallam’s Croft until the nineteen hundreds, after the man who had built it forty or more years before. His children didn’t want it, and it was bought by another man who’d made his fortune in cotton, and he named it after his three children.”
    â€œHis children?”
    â€œYes. Alice, Derek, and Leyton, the last named after a maternal uncle the family had expectations from. He put the names together. Nothing to do with trees.”
    â€œOh.”
    Caroline felt distinctly deflated, as if her beloved house had been devalued. It was like people calling their semis Philmar or Valjon. She shook herself for being silly, but she felt the house deserved better.
    â€œWhat happened to the three children?” she asked.
    â€œDerek—it was rather an uncommon name then—was killed in the Battle of the Somme. Leyton was killed three weeks before Armistice Day, and he’d never got the legacy from his maternal uncle that everyone hoped for. If he had, Alice would have been quite well off. As it was, she and her husband struggled with the house for years and years, but finally had to sell it in the fifties. It had various owners—the last one was Alfred Beck, who was your predecessor. It was too big for him after his wife died. He rattled around in it. He’s much happier in his bungalow in Hornsea. He made his money in Whitby, out of fishing, and he always missed the sea.”
    Jack seemed about to say something more, then decided against it.
    â€œMarius was lucky to find Alderley, anyway,” said Caroline to fill in the silence. “Or rather, I was lucky he found it.”
    â€œOn the contrary, we are lucky you came to live among us,” said Jack, with his usual gallantry.
    â€œI wonder if the situation would be acceptable in any village around the country,” mused Caroline, “or is Marsham exceptionally tolerant? It would be quite unacceptable in parts of Scotland, I would guess. And Wales too, don’t you think? But in most parts attitudes have changed enormously. Think—not so very long ago I would have been discreetly housed in a