Sandra hoovered through the downstairs and wiped the surfaces with a mixture of olive oil, organic white vinegar and essential lemon oil. It was her own recipe and it left no stains or streaks on natural wood. It also left the house smelling fresh and light. Their guests were expected at two, after Joe finished work, and she wondered where Fred had got to. She peered through the back window in the kitchen and spotted him pottering about in the garden. The wrens had not yet abandoned their nests for warmer climates across the Atlantic, and she watched them playfully squeezing in and out of the crevices behind the sheds that they used year on year to nest and breed. It had been a bumper year for them and Sandra’s cabbages and cauliflowers were almost twice the size of last year’s harvest thanks to the tiny birds feeding on the fat caterpillars and bugs.

Spring was the most satisfying time to watch them as the male competed for mates to lure to admire his nest-building skills. Quite the noisy engineers. Sandra sat for hours listening to them shout tunefully at one another, as if arguing like married couples. Their return each season warmed Sandra and reassured her that their souls were pure: wrens didn’t nest in the midst of dark hearts.

She watched her husband and fiddled with her pinafore. She was nervous. It was simply because her only dealings with Annie had been mired with gossip and misunderstanding, and she’d never had the chance to put it right. She almost didn’t believe Fred when he’d told her that Joe was bringing his family to Sunday lunch. She’d kept it fairly light and dismissed Fred’s idea of a whole venison roast: she’d seared fillets from a fallow deer and sliced them thinly, alongside a ham, potatoes, salads, home-made quiche, and cheese. Puddings were her speciality and she figured that any teenaged boys would love chocolate cake, late season strawberries and cream.

Fred came in from the garden with mucky hands and went to wash them in the newly rinsed sink.

‘Go in the bathroom, Fred!’ she admonished him. ‘And take off those boots!’

He smiled casually and did as he was told. She knew she was being crotchety. And he knew why. The knock on the door startled them and Sandra looked at her clock: their guests were a little early.

But it wasn’t the Spencer family at the door. It was the police.

‘Oh, hello. Can I help you?’ Sandra said, peering over their shoulder. House-to-house calls and just the very presence of the law on her doorstep was about the last thing she wanted to present to Annie Spencer: it looked as though they were in trouble.

‘Good morning. My name is…’ The uniformed officer began speaking and Sandra zoned him out, perturbed in the midst of her anxiety.

‘Sorry?’