It had been well over twenty years since she’d left the band, and during that time – until Iain’s phone call the year before – Meredith’s paranoia had subsided to a dull roar; most days, anyway. Sometimes, though, she was almost puzzled why nobody ever recognised her, but simultaneously relieved. As Pete always said, though, it was about the context. When she’d been in the band, she’d had black backcombed hair and jumped around stages in black PVC, shrieking into microphones. Now she had short blondish hair, wore Boden dresses and sold beribboned packs of honeycomb brittle and overpriced Minstead House merchandise to Japanese tourists, most of whom were far too young to remember her.

The day of the break-in dragged by without further incident, but Meredith couldn’t settle to anything. It was a big relief when the time came to flip the sign on the door to ‘closed’, and set off through the grounds towards her cottage.

On the far side of the ha-ha, she felt calmed by the sight of the Surrey Hills rising up in the distance, stolid layers of hazy shadow thickening as the sun slid down behind them. It was a balmy June evening and the rolling lawns, a vibrant green after a week of rain, smelled fresh and new as she headed past Lady Wilmington’s grave, planted in solitary state in the middle of a separate grassed area, flanked at the back by box hedges with marble statues in front of them. Lady W had planned it all herself before her death, leaving sketches showing exactly where in the shadow of the house she wanted to be buried, and which statues would be her marble guardians for eternity.

Coming through the archway from the vegetable garden, the sight of her little Victorian cottage’s bottle-green shutters, turreted gables, Gothic-arched front door and barley-sugar-twist chimney pots reassured her even more.

It had just been an accident. No sign of a break-in, nothing stolen. One of the cleaners had probably done it and been too embarrassed to admit it.

She opened the wooden gate and walked up the path. Coming home always felt like she was meeting a friend, she loved her cottage so much. Built in 1879, at the same time as the house, gatehouse and other outbuildings (including the stables, which now housed the shop), historically it had been the residence of generations of gardeners – she was the first non-gardener resident. The Earl had let her rent it since the current head gardener started having children, and his wife wanted to live somewhere less isolated.

Pete always questioned the logic behind living in such a secluded place. ‘You’re lonely,’ he’d say, bluntly, and she always denied it – because, when she was with him, she never did feel lonely. And the rest of the time, it wasn’t loneliness as such; it was paranoia. She only really felt safe once she was sequestered away in her cottage.