‘Come in,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the house.

Aaron sighed but when Clancy stepped through the green front door into a tiny hall with stripy wallpaper, he followed. In the kitchen they found Ernie, who obviously had an impressive turn of speed despite his age, already switching on a kettle, an open jar of Maxwell House standing beside three mugs. The kitchen was the same size and shape as Dilys’s but clean and bare.

‘Only a quick one for me.’ Aaron took a seat at the table. ‘I’m supposed to be terracing a garden in Titchwell.’

‘She’s better-looking than Evelyn,’ Ernie answered, evidently in a different conversation in his head.

Clancy caught an apologetic glance from Aaron and found herself grinning. ‘Have you lived here long, Ernie?’ she asked, in an effort to turn to safer topics before he enlarged on his opinion of hers or Evelyn’s looks.

The kettle boiled and Ernie poured the water into the mugs, stirring vigorously. ‘Since I lost my wife. Soon be ten years she’s been gone and still a pain in the arse.’ He stuck a sugar jar and a carton of milk on the table too.

Clancy might have been thrown by this if Dilys hadn’t already explained their novel living arrangements.

‘She said you’re Alice’s cousin,’ he added suddenly, peering at Clancy. ‘Where’s Alice got to? She was a gal, she was.’ Ernie snorted a laugh. ‘Always up to something. Always got some plan afoot. Pretty little dot. She and me got on like a house on fire.’

‘Good! I’ve always got on with her, too.’ Clancy was glad someone had something positive to say about Alice.

‘You look a bit like her. But she was a cow, pissing off like that,’ Ernie added, his fond tone belying the caustic nature of his words. He fell to drinking his coffee meditatively.

Oh dear, the positivity hadn’t lasted long. ‘Er, well, I’m looking forward to exploring the village soon. For one reason or another I’ve been stuck in the Roundhouse pretty much since I got here. Evelyn left maps she gave the guests—’

‘Maps?’ Ernie bellowed a laugh, his eyebrows beetling incredulously. ‘If you need a map to find your way round Nelson’s Bar you must be brainless.’

Aaron cleared his throat and, finding the elderly man’s bluntness uncomfortable judging by his pained expression, managed to keep him talking about Roundhouse Row until they’d finished their coffee and could leave.

‘Sorry about Ernie,’ Aaron apologised as soon as they were out of earshot in the lane. ‘He just turns his thoughts to words, no matter how inappropriate or blunt.’

Clancy shrugged. ‘I’m sure we’ll get used to each other.’ Then, as Aaron took out the keys to his truck, she recalled something that had bothered her last night. ‘By the way, I’m sorry if I somehow said the wrong thing to you and Genevieve yesterday. The atmosphere got a bit …’ She let the sentence tail away rather than say ‘weird’.