David pretended to look conspiratorial. ‘Is this where I should extract some sort of deal from you in return for my silence? Make you offer to bake my office rota cake?’

‘You could. But it would be a bit mean.’

‘Why? Do you have a particularly awful secret ingredient?’ He raised an eyebrow again. ‘Leeches? Copydex? Sultanas?’

‘Don’t give me ideas.’ Surreptitiously, Tara checked her phone to make sure she wasn’t accidentally pocket-calling Phil – it had been known – then set off down the street.

‘I wasn’t stalking you, by the way. I only saw you the once before today.’ He followed her, his long stride easily keeping up with her quick pace. ‘Was it an emergency this morning? I’ll overlook it if it was.’

‘No,’ said Tara. She found it hard to lie to David. Presumably he was doing some sort of low-level hypnotism on her now. ‘I just like driving. It’s my quiet time. My me time.’

‘Do you have a nice drive in?’

‘Yes, actually, it’s quite picturesque …’ Tara was about to describe her route in from her old house, the one she’d shared with Justin, which went through a series of pretty black-and-white villages, the oldest church in the county and, unexpectedly, a llama farm. She stopped herself: it was clear from their lunchtime walks when she’d dangled some Justin-based conversational hints that David had no intention of revealing more about his hypnotic past, and that was the only reason Tara ever wanted to talk about Justin again. She didn’t really want David linking her with him in his mind.

He was waiting for an answer. ‘Well, no,’ she admitted, ‘it’s not a long drive now. But it’s the principle.’

‘So where do you live?’

‘On Malvern Road, going out of town? Just up from the Methodist church.’

‘What, seriously? That has to be barely a mile from here. It’s quicker to walk than to find somewhere to park.’

‘No, it’s—’

‘Tara, if you’re finding parking spaces on the Poets’ Streets, you need to tell me your secret. I live in Southey Avenue – round the corner.’ He indicated another street of white-fronted villas behind the one they were on. ‘And I can never find anywhere to park. It’s why I walk everywhere.’

Tara made a note not to park in Southey Avenue again. ‘Well, good for you.’

‘Yes, it is. Tremendously good for you.’ He said it so seriously, she couldn’t take offence. ‘And fascinating too! Did you know there’s a miraculous well on Coleridge Street? Apparently, the water was part of the monastery’s spa treatments. Well, not a spa, exactly, I suppose – more of a … last-ditch leprosy treatment.’

Tara shot him a side glance. ‘No local history before breakfast, David.’

‘Just trying to make the walk interesting,’ he said, falling in behind her.