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the gym before spending an eighteen-hour day at her desk. After breaking off to dine or go to the opera with clients, she would return to work.
    At the office, Carrie insisted on being called by her maiden name. Her charming, dissolute husband, Alan Macbeth, was referred to as ‘Mr Carrie Bancroft’ (his wife, because of her back-stabbing qualities, was ‘Lady Macbeth’).
    Furious to be trapped in Hong Kong while her brother Martin would no doubt be pulling a fast one, Carrie arrived the following day by helicopter, for which she would later claim expenses from the Trust. She found Martin still commandeering the telephone.
    ‘Where’s Alan? He’s turned off his mobile,’ she demanded, chucking down her briefcase.
    ‘Rang and said he was coming down later,’ said Martin acidly. ‘He was always a tower of jelly in a crisis.’
    Carrie’s lips tightened. ‘He’s interviewing some monk up at Fountains Abbey for his book on depression. How’s Mother?’
    ‘Off the wall, in the kitchen.’
    Etta, who’d woken five times in the night only to find there was no longer any Sampson to turn, had leapt out of bed dripping with sweat, terrified his breakfast wouldn’t be ready on time.
    Carrie found her mother mindlessly stirring porridge in the kitchen, gazing at bumblebees glutting themselves on the winter honeysuckle. She had odd shoes on her feet.
    ‘I am so sorry, darling.’ Etta tried to hug Carrie, who shook her off.
    ‘Don’t, you’ll get me going.’
    ‘You must be tired. Would you like to lie down or have some breakfast?’
    ‘I’ll have Dad’s porridge since you’re making it,’ said Carrie, then, as Martin and Romy joined them: ‘Where’s Dad’s body?’
    ‘In the Chapel of Rest,’ replied Martin. ‘I spent most of yesterday afternoon with the undertakers. They were delightful but by the time I’d filled in all the forms, organized the service, the cars, the coffin and the music, I could have been dead myself.’ He laughed heartily.
    ‘We decided on a wickerwork basket instead of a coffin,’ he went on. ‘Romy’s offered to decorate it with flowers. She’s so artistic.’
    ‘Won’t that look a bit cheap?’ snapped Carrie.
    ‘Certainly not.’
    Etta stopped stirring the porridge and, with a rare surge of dissent, cried, ‘Sampson should have a proper coffin. Oak or yew. He deserves one.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin crushingly. ‘Dad wanted to save the planet and you know how he hated wasting money. Now if he’d lived longer …’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Etta.
    ‘You’re burning that porridge,’ said Carrie.
    Having topped up a bowlful with treacle and cream, she dragged Martin into Sampson’s office.
    ‘Is there nothing to be done?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    It took Martin and Carrie only five minutes to work out that ravishing Bluebell Hill would have to be sold to pay the massive estate duty. Sampson, like many philanderers, had been unable to bear the thought of his friends moving in on Etta. Aware of her hopelessly generous nature, he hated the idea of her squandering his inheritance on lame ducks and had handed everything over to Martin and Carrie with the proviso they looked after their mother.
    By the afternoon, Carrie had conjured up an estate agent who valued the house at between three and four million.
    ‘If it’s going to reach top whack, we should get all those rails, stairlifts and hoists out of the house,’ mused Martin.
    He and Carrie had also in their peregrinations noticed herbaceous borders dark brown with un-cut-back plants, sculptures hidden by overgrown shrubs and trees, ground elder on the rampage, and agreed the romantic garden was too much for Etta.
    Their mother was clearly over the top, rushing around making beds, cooking for everyone, trying to answer the letters of sympathy that poured in: writing three times to some people, chucking other letters in the wastepaper basket still in their envelopes.
    ‘Get some cards printed,