The Kiss - The Story of an Obsession This is a rather personal story, since as a very young man, Hugo Vickers knew the protagonists in the story. Principally there were two sisters who shared a house in the Clewer part of Windsor, under the shadow of Windsor Castle. One sister looked after an old Military Knight in the castle. The other sister, Joan Kappey, lived at home, surrounded by photographs of a mysterious man, the two images hand-painted and repeated everywhere. By chance Hugo Vickers met him in London, a moment as might occur in a Francis Durbridge thriller. The man told him: 'It's a very difficult situation. You and I - we have never met.' Hugo Vickers did not think he would ever learn what it was all about. He saw the man again, he saw the man with the two sisters, yet the mystery was not solved. Finally after Joan Kappey died, he found he was an executor to her estate, and was allowed to take possession of her private papers. The full story emerged, how at the age of 59, she was kissed by 44-year-old Dick Bonham, and became obsessed by him, writing to him every day. But it is a larger story - the story of a valiant family of unknown distressed gentlefolk, with all the frustrations and restrictions of life before and after the First World War. And the denouement is most surprising.