But Jenny must have clocked the look, because she added, rather sharply, ‘It’s very different from weekending, you know. That lot never involve themselves, just invite their London mates to stay, bring their own fancy food instead of buying locally, then bugger off back to the Smoke.’ Although she’d spoken lightly, Romy sensed the simmering anger behind her words and thought it might be about more than weekend visitors and second homes. ‘I hope you’re going to be a proper part of our community.’ It was as if she were throwing down the gauntlet.

‘I fully intend to,’ Romy said, drawing herself up and giving Jenny her very best smile. When she glanced at Finch again, she saw his eyes widen in mock-alarm. ‘I was brought up in the country, Jenny. I know how it works.’

It was true: her parents had been hippies – before hippies were invented. Her father, Alan, was part of what would now be called the ‘gig economy’ – a part-time gardener, handyman, painter and decorator – while her mother, Peggy, baked cakes for the village shop, looked after their extensive vegetable garden and chickens, and smoked the trout Alan regularly pulled from the local river.

Romy and her brother Blake lived a wild, unsupervised childhood, roaming the fields and woods around the village with glorious freedom. They never wanted for anything, although their clothes and every single thing in the house were secondhand, picked up from goodness knows where by her father on one of his mysterious forays with his bicycle and trailer. They didn’t have a fridge, a Hoover, heating or pocket money and certainly not a television. It was Michael’s party piece, to recount her parents’ eccentricities – he seemed almost proud of them – but she wondered with amusement how Jenny would view the way in which she’d been brought up.

‘Game, set and match,’ Finch joked, as they walked home later that evening.

‘Is Jenny always that fierce?’ Romy asked.

‘I’m not sure she appreciates a city interloper on her patch, however much she claims to want you to join in.’

‘It was such a fun evening, despite Jenny giving me the third degree,’ she said, as they stood on the corner where their paths diverged, Finch going north, she south across the village. And it had been. Although she barely knew any of those present, she’d found herself oddly relaxed in their company. She felt she’d been heard, that they were interested in what she had to say. She was not just making conversation, as she had so often in the high-octane social gatherings of her past.

‘So you don’t think Jenny has a point?’ he teased. ‘You must have hung out with some pretty interesting people through Michael’s work.’