Ash’s brows had lowered, his expression darkening. ‘I’m still not happy about you working for Percys.’

‘It’s just a few hours at weekends. There are no Percys there any more, Ash. The family name died out. Turners rule this village, remember?’

‘Riverdance boy is coming nowhere near you.’

‘That story’s so fake. Luca’s soft as a puppy. You’ll like him. Total non-threat. I’ll introduce you.’ Carly knew she was laying it on a bit thick. What she would never admit to a soul was the seed of truth in Bridge’s accusation. There was something about Luca she couldn’t quite shake from her head.

But when they walked back, the wassail singers had launched into another folk anthem, hurdy-gurdy player spinning enthusiastically. Carly scanned the orchard. Luca had long gone.

*

‘If he knocks we’ll open it. Otherwise silence, understood?’

Dogs to either side, Pax sat with her back against the wall in Lester’s cottage hallway, feeling the sisal doormat scratching through the cotton of her pyjama bottoms, raking her hair back with her fingers.

‘There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing,’ she whispered. ‘And the clock’s ticking.’

She was, she realised, behaving slightly – very – madly. Feeling increasingly as if she’d lost her mind tonight along with her heart and quite a lot of dignity, she didn’t trust herself. It was uncomfortably like being drunk. The toughest night for staying sober had left her breathless, unable to sit still, her thoughts in a vortex. Nothing settled her. She’d let Laurence play, later walked round the yard with the dogs, tried to watch television and then read. She was just killing time, she’d realised. She must stop killing time. So she’d put on some washing and started Sellotaping the love letters back together for Lester, working forensically. She treated it as a jigsaw puzzle she must solve, not reading more than the sentences she was matching up at a time, not prying into the story that was a part of a private past, and yet in her own way becoming familiar with it. Having it in her hands made her feel better about things, accepting the simple truth of her father’s greatest love and its concealment, the reactionary prejudice in this corner of country life not so very different even today. There’s no such thing as bad timing, just timing.

Feeling cold, she’d gone upstairs to fetch another layer, pulling a heavy jumper from a drawer to find the breeches that her mother had bought her tucked beneath it. Through the little casement window, bright as an apple slice was the waxing half-moon, a week away from its full wolf face. It had made her think of Lester, still carrying his lost love.

I would give every star in the sky to see it.

That’s when she’d heard singing, drawing the curtain and killing the lights before taking up her position by the front door.

She closed her eyes as she recognised ‘My Langan Love’.

*

‘Her welcome, like her love for me,’ sang Luca,