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meant to be directing it, but she
decided to send her deputy instead.
    ‘I just don’t feel up to it,’ she’d said to Grey the day before, sitting at her desk clutching a skinny latte and holding the telephone to her ear with her shoulder while
she scrolled through a series of photographs on her computer. ‘Rachel’s bound to be there, undermining my authority and doing whatever she likes. Milly can take my place.’
    ‘Is this because of Harry?’ asked Grey, his voice stern down the telephone line.
    She’d sighed and clicked her mouse on another image. It expanded to fill her screen. A fashionable model was pulling a silly face and it was just the wrong side of being cute. She deleted
it. ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Darling, you’ve got to pull yourself together. This is the third time you two have broken up. You’re ready to let him go and get on with your life. To be honest, I think you
were over him a long time ago.’
    ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ She knew it was true: she couldn’t go on being reeled in and cast away. It was emotionally exhausting and her desire for Harry had gradually been
eroded by the pain he kept putting her through. Grey had been there plenty of times to mop up tears, fill wine glasses and analyse Harry and his emotions until the early hours, but even he was now
urging her to buck up.
    ‘Of course I’m right. And I don’t work half as well with Milly. I need you there. This is an expensive shoot – you’ve got to come, it won’t work without you.
Especially if Rachel starts playing up.’
    She thought for a moment. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, knowing he wouldn’t back down. ‘You win.’
    ‘You’re driving as well. Pick me up at seven.’ Grey put the phone down.
    The next morning, she’d pulled her Volkswagen Beetle up in front of his Notting Hill flat, they’d loaded his camera equipment into the back and then set off down the M3 towards Fort
Stirling. It had been midday before they’d arrived, both hot and thirsty and desperate to stretch their legs.
    ‘Wow,’ Delilah had said, as they pulled up in front of the house. The drive from the gates to the house had been extraordinary, weaving its way through velvety green parkland past
oaks, elms and limes, all venerable with age. It had led to a place that looked part storybook castle and part elegant Regency house, a building that gently flowed from an ancient round tower on
one side through to a battlemented Tudor front and an extended wing of wonderful eighteenth-century symmetry. Despite its collection of ages and styles, the house felt as melded and comfortable
with itself as a stack of pillows, nestled into a hollow and protected by a phalanx of trees behind. Delilah and Grey climbed out of the car. ‘What
is
this place?’
    ‘It is splendid,’ admitted Grey, standing back and taking it all in. ‘I’ve heard of Fort Stirling, but never been here. They’re not a very social family, the
Stirlings. You don’t tend to stumble across them at parties.’
    ‘It’s so beautiful.’ Delilah waved an arm out towards the parkland. ‘All of it.’
    ‘That’s Dorset for you. Well lived-in, softened by centuries of husbandry into this delightful landscape. Now, we’d better find Rachel and see if the models have
arrived.’
    Standing under a grand ornamental porch, they pulled on a bell handle set beside the huge arched front door, and one of the set assistants answered.
    ‘Where’s the owner?’ Delilah asked as they were led through the vast entrance hall with a black-and-white chequered marble floor. The assistant shrugged.
    She guessed whoever it was had made themselves scarce. People with a house like this were paid good money by magazines and film crews for its use as a setting for fashion shoots and period
dramas and they probably knew well enough by now to stay in the background and let them get on with it. After all, they got reimbursed for anything that wasn’t left exactly as found.
    Rachel was in