The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house.

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end.

Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.