The pub looked Christmas-card pretty from the outside. It still had a string of fairy lights draped around the doorway, and the square stone-mullioned windows were steamed up but I could see the outline of people jostling inside. We were hit by a cacophony of noise when we entered, and the smell of stale alcohol mixed with peanuts. A group of older men were standing in the corner playing darts and someone had put ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ by ELO on the jukebox. Joel, the landlord, looked up from behind the bar as we walked in. He smiled kindly at me, like he always did. And I saw his expression darken slightly when he noticed Daphne. I wondered why. My antennae twitched and I was reminded again that I didn’t really know Daphne. I couldn’t let my barrier down. It was exhausting, the constant being on alert, like one of those guards at Buckingham Palace, but I’d been doing it for four years. Usually Joel was so good-natured, one of life’s jovial types, laughter lines bracketing his mouth when he smiled, which was often. Late forties, handsome in a rugged, earthy way with a warm West Country accent and a love of Aran jumpers. And he had been kind to me in the past. When I first came to the village, pregnant with you and scared of my own shadow, he’d helped me when I mistakenly thought I was being followed because a man – who turned out to be Mick Bracken from the farm at the edge of Beggars Nook – was innocently walking his dog behind me on land that I now knew to be his. Joel had sat me down on one of the bar stools, made me a cup of coffee and waited for me to stop shaking. He never asked any questions, never tried to make me tell him what or who I was so afraid of. He was just a reassuring presence. I often wished he was my type.

‘How can I help you, ladies?’ Joel asked, from behind the bar.

‘What do you want to drink? My treat,’ said Daphne, reaching into her fringed bag for her purse. ‘It’s a thank-you for letting me lodge with you.’ I spotted the look that passed between her and Joel and it gave me an uneasy feeling, as if they knew something that I didn’t.

I asked for a dry white wine and Daphne had the same, and we went to sit in the corner by the fire, on the other side of the pub to where the men were playing darts.

‘Do you get on with Joel?’ I asked, trying to sound casual as I shook off my coat. He had his back to us, filling a glass with an amber-coloured spirit from a bottle on the wall.

‘I suppose. Why?’

‘I just felt there was . . . I dunno . . . tension between you.’