‘How can I trust him, though?’ Connie wailed. ‘In fact, how do I know he’s not telling Devan every single thing that happened between us even as we speak?’ Angrily she wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘But that’s almost beside the point. Even if he never breathes a bloody word, I can’t live like this, Lynne, with him breathing down my neck. I daren’t even go out in my own village for fear of bumping into him.’

‘He doesn’t sound sane to me.’

‘What he’s doing is totally insane. Although he appears completely normal to everyone else. They love him.’

There was a baffled silence at the other end of the phone.

‘Well, perhaps he doesn’t mean any harm, Con. Perhaps he means what he says – that he just wants to be near you.’

‘And I’m supposed to roll over and let him be part of my life, am I? Ignore the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, the threat that one day he’ll get drunk and blurt out he had wild sex with me all summer?’

There was silence as Lynne digested this. ‘So, he didn’t mention he’d met you before, when you were introduced?’

‘No. But he turned up at Fiona Raven’s book launch. How the fuck does he know her? It’s like he’s found out every single detail about my life and is quietly infiltrating it all.’

‘It’s called stalking,’ her sister repeated patiently.

Connie let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Call it what you like. But I hardly think the police’ll send out their armed response because I don’t particularly like the look of some man who’s moved into our village.’

‘He’ll get bored, won’t he? If you ignore him,’ Lynne said, after another short silence.

Connie hoped she was right, but Jared didn’t seem to follow normal rules. ‘God, Lynne. I know I did a really bad thing, cheating on Devan like that. And I know it serves me bloody well right. But this level of retribution doesn’t seem quite fair.’

‘“He who digs a pit will fall into it”, Proverbs twenty-six, verse twenty-seven,’ Lynne murmured to herself. ‘There is a very simple solution, of course.’

‘What?’

‘Tell Devan.’

Connie felt her gut seize.

‘Then Jared has no power.’ Warming to her theme, Lynne went on, ‘He really should know, Connie. It’s such a big lie sitting at the centre of your marriage.’

It wasn’t as if Connie hadn’t considered telling Devan. Part of her was desperate to let the toxic secret slip from her grasp. Surely it would be a massive relief. But then she examined the fallout, the hurt and humiliation on her husband’s face … the probable ruination of their marriage. And now Jared had compounded the potential mortification by becoming friends with Devan.