‘I’m sure we will.’ Drew Fitzgerald made it sound like a hanging offence.

Bronwyn Pugh, co-owner of the Village Stores, was mopping the remains of Gareth’s Glenfiddich slick from her paisley frock. Maddy approached her with a smile of sympathy. ‘Diana told me. How’s it drying out?’

‘Nicely, thank you,’ Mrs Pugh hissed. ‘Although I’ll smell like a distillery.’

‘Not a bad thing to smell like.’ Maddy’s smile had stretched to manic. ‘Mr Pugh not with you tonight?’

‘No.’

Trawling around for scintillating party chat, Maddy said, ‘I hope he’s not ill. I saw him earlier and –’

‘Maddy,’ Bronwyn Pugh stopped mopping, ‘Bernie isn’t here this evening because he had a little accident. It left him very shaken.’

‘No! Oh, poor Bernie. What happened?’

‘I think you know very well, Maddy Beckett. You were dressed up like one of them stripperamas, Bernie said. It shocked him. He fell off his bicycle. Now, I’m not one to gossip – as you well know – and what you gets up to in the privacy of your own home is your affair. But,’ Bronwyn Pugh took a deep breath, ‘I do not want you enticing my husband, you understand?’

Maddy was stricken. ‘I wasn’t! The door mat had got caught up and I just –’

Bronwyn frowned fiercely. ‘That’s as maybe. But my Bernie is spoken for.’

Maddy bit her lip. ‘Oh, but I’m not after him, I can assure you. I wouldn’t want your husband if he was the last man in Milton St John. No, well, I don’t mean …’

But it was too late. With a sniff and a glower, Mrs Pugh marched away towards the door. She’d been right. She smelled exactly like a distillery. It didn’t go well with tweed. Maddy closed her eyes. It was one of those days.

‘Grub’s up!’ Gareth yelled. ‘Form an orderly queue! No shoving at the back!’

Maddy’s stomach rumbled. Not even an evening of un mitigated social disasters could disguise the fact that she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast. She’d just grab something to eat and then sneak away. No one would notice.

The food was laid out in the alcove, a mouth-watering array of squishy temptation. Maddy hung around until people had borne away piled-high plates and then crept in for the leftovers. Gareth James-Jordan had the same idea.

‘Still plenty here for the workers,’ he roared through a generous portion of salmon roulade. ‘I say, you look pretty miserable, my dear.’

‘Thanks,’ Maddy said mournfully, helping herself to prawns in flaky pastry and sautéed goat’s cheese balanced on dangerously thin slices of rye bread. ‘I’m in the dog house.’

‘Me too.’ Gareth tried to balance chicken liver parfait on top of his glass. ‘I dropped a bottle of malt on Mrs Pugh.’

‘I told Mrs Pugh that I wouldn’t want her husband if he was the last man on earth. And I told the new man at Peapods that he’d never make a go of it because he was too inexperienced.’