Chapter 12

I came into the kitchen from attending to the horses. The children were noisily preparing breakfast. The doorbell rang. The children's gaiety died immediately, to be replaced with anxiety.

"Don't answer it, Daddy," Georgie pleaded.

I reassured her everything was under control, but used the door viewer. I saw two women I didn't recognise, who gave off the air of busybody officialdom. Opening the door one of the women flashed some sort of ID, and tried to push past me saying, "We are from Social Services, Child Protec..."

That was enough. I had held my foot against the door for just such an eventuality, blocking the open space with my body. "I'm sorry," I said loudly, "you are not coming into my house." With that I closed the door firmly. Harry, who had followed him into the hall, ran back into the kitchen, and locked the back door.

The women stood outside, loudly proclaiming, "We have right of access Mr Winters. If you don't let us in we shall return with the police and have you arrested."

I phoned both Milla and David. David was about to leave for his office, and promptly diverted directly to my house. When he arrived, the Social Services people tried to follow him in. As soon as he identified himself as my solicitor, they promptly withdrew. Milla, in the meantime, had dashed from her half eaten breakfast, straight to her office and was onto both the police and the local council. Neither realm of officialdom was particularly forthcoming with any information until she told them the name of her Chambers and that she would issue writs against them for harassment.

The name and threat of legal action, whilst not producing immediate results, did elicit promises of return phone calls from higher placed officials. Milla gave a deadline of 10.30 for a response. Not that she really expected things to move that quickly, but she had found it best to use the stick rather than the carrot when dealing with bureaucracy.