“He did have a girlfriend for a while,” her mum went on. Nory’s ears pricked up. “When he first moved back. I think they’d been together at the university, but after a while she stopped coming back. It’s a very quiet place if you’re used to city life.”

“Hartmead is a quiet place whatever you’re used to.”

“Well, you say that, but you’ll never guess which TV program wants to film here . . .”

“Countryfile?” asked Nory. “Songs of Praise?”

“Midsomer Murders!” said her mum, sitting back with her arms folded and a smug look on her face.

“I can see that,” agreed Nory. “This is just the sort of picture-perfect place seething with underlying goings-on!”

“Precisely. They want to use the nursery. It’s going to be the scene of a grisly murder. Can you imagine? How exciting! And they’ll pay us a good fee. Your dad’s saying no at the moment, you know how he feels about big corporations . . .”

“Oh, for god’s sake. He needs to get off his high horse. How much money are they offering?”

“Five thousand pounds a day! They reckon they’ll need three or four days.”

“Mum, you’ve got to get Dad to agree. Offers like this don’t come along every day. Think what you could do with that money. When was the last time you went on a holiday? You could get a new kitchen. A new sofa, you could get new carpets.”

Trust her dad to put his morals before business sense. It annoyed her to no end that her dad was so stubborn. As if running a business wasn’t hard enough, he had to be permanently on some kind of righteous crusade.

“Oh, don’t you worry about Dad.” Her mum chuckled. “I’ll make him see things my way. We’ll be having a murder in the nursery one way or another!” She winked at Nory.

“What does Thomas think?”

“He had his reservations, but now he thinks it’s a good idea. Shelley is very sensible; he listens to her. To be honest I’d have the Midsomer people here for free just for the fun of it, but of course I won’t; we need the cash. So you’ve still got a crush on our Isaac after all these years.”

“I’ve not still got a crush on Isaac. I haven’t thought about him since I was about fifteen.” This was a small lie.

“But you’re thinking about him now.” Her mum smiled knowingly.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only to me.”

“How can you even tell? You literally saw us together for like two minutes.”

“It’s written all over your face. You used to get the same look when he’d call round for Thomas when you were a kid.”

“Mum!”