‘Non-recordable,’ finishes Biddy. ‘It is. It means you don’t get a criminal record, it’s like a traffic offence.’

‘So why were they arrested then?’ Mimi asks desperately. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Put it this way,’ Colin Watts pronounces, throwing his Rothman into a busy lizzie, which is instantly fished out by Greg Hitchens (inordinately proud of Honeyborne’s Best Kept Village citation won a few years ago, an honour for which he took full credit).

‘Mrs…?’

‘Er, Fleming.’

‘Put it this way, Missus Fleming. Say you saw a puppy in the parlour. And a great steaming pile of puppy shit right next to it. Would you think the puppy was responsible, like, for the shit, or would you think the puppy had nothing to do with it?’

‘Oh, do shut your trap, Colin Watts,’ says Gwenda, fiercely. But I notice her eyes are glittering and she still stares at him, as I used to stare at Henry Pike, in the build-up to the daily service, that is, when he used to ride his stallion into the Stores to pick up his copy of Horse and Hound.

Clutching a cold pint of Court Place milk in a wide-mouthed glass bottle, I say goodbye to Mimi and walk slowly back up the hill to the Dairy. Everyone has dispersed, back to the stables and the feedstore and Horse Supplies, and retreated for tea and HobNobs, or for morning coffee at the pub.

Several pick-ups and Land Rovers hurtle past me, and then one car slows.

It is Garry, the publican, in his Honda Civic. He stops the car, and winds down his passenger side window by hand.

‘Mrs Musgrove,’ he says.

‘Garry?’

‘Well, oi don’t know, what to say n’ all, but I think I should say…’ Garry looks at the dashboard, suddenly shy.

‘What, Garry? Say what?’ I say crisply. I am long used to village gossip, advice, kindly warnings, and so on, all of which is, I feel, a form of jealousy for my being prepared to take what I want – behave like a man, in other words.

‘Well, I wouldn’t if I was you,’ he said, darkly.

‘Wouldn’t what?’

And then Garry tells me, in brutal language, this awful story.

It was about what sounded like a particularly nasty rape. ‘’E ‘ad her both ways, if you gets moy meaning,’ Garry says.

As he speaks, his eyes watch my face very closely and, at its conclusion, he runs a tongue hungrily over his lips, as if he’s just eaten a sugar-covered doughnut. I want to run away, very fast up the hill to the Dairy, but that isn’t the worst of it.

‘Look, Mrs Musgrove,’ he goes on. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Like yous, I’ve never bin one to say no to a spot of malarkey misself her her.’ He sniggers, and gives me a filthy, suggestive look. I wonder what on earth the village gossip about me currently is, given that nothing – yet – has happened with Jesse Marlon. ‘But you’ve got a young ’un at home, if I’ve understood correctly. A young, teenage girl’. That tongue comes out again. ‘I’m not saying nothing about nobody, but if I was you, I wouldn’t have that Colin Watts anywhere near moy house, if you get moy drift.’