‘I can’t believe that Connor’s responsible,’ Tilly protested even as she acknowledged to herself that Matt would certainly notice if anything was changed. He was obsessively neat, and she had cleaned his room often enough to know it. Something niggled at the back of her mind, the memory of coming home to find her own things displaced – the hairbrush out of place, the shoes pushed beyond reach beneath the bed. At the time she had put it down to haste on her part. Suspicion flickered for a moment before she banished it. Connor wouldn’t! Though he had been in residence at the time, she remembered, and home before her that day. Still, why would he? It was ridiculous even to think it.

Luke was of the same opinion. ‘Nah, you’re dreaming, mate!’

‘You think?’ Matt retorted. ‘What do we know about the bloke anyway, eh? He rocks up here, acts like he’s entitled to be housed and fed, and snoops around the place at his leisure. I caught him in my workshop one day. Lookin’ to borrow some pliers, he said. Only he weren’t nowhere near the toolbox at the time.’

‘He’d just have been interested,’ Sophie said. ‘Sheds, you know – tools and junk. Men love poking around in them. But getting back to what I was saying – you reckon you could do that, Till?’

‘What? Oh, the recipes . . . Yes, no problem. Simple, foolproof, easy to follow. Right you are.’ She grinned at her table mates. ‘Dinner for dummies then. I’ll make a list and write up the page numbers. You’ll all be chefs by the end of the season.’

‘Or dead from food poisoning,’ Luke said dolefully.

Only Matt failed to join in the laughter.

Chapter Fifteen

Tilly had almost reflexively dismissed Matt’s accusation about Connor, but later that evening, as she sat up in her bed brushing her hair and ruminating idly over the day’s events, she recalled his words and felt the growth of a faint uneasiness. It was no good telling herself that Matt had imagined somebody getting into his gear; Binboona’s mechanic lived in a world of facts, not fancy. He wasn’t the imaginative sort. It made him predictable, and yes, boring, even if his inability to invent was his main strength. What was, was, with Matt. Like the game that he was so enamoured of, she reflected. Chess rules were immutable. There might be a million moves to be made about the board, but when the king was checkmated, that was it. So if he said his belongings had been rifled through, then somebody must have done it, and Connor was the only candidate.