‘Hello, my little terrors – come on in,’ Keeley says, beaming as she opens the door to us. Despite wanting to appear more grown-up lately, even Finley grins and rushes inside at Keeley’s invite. The smell of roast beef wafts out to greet me, and I immediately relax as I cross the threshold.

Lunch was fabulous – and it always tastes so much better when someone else has cooked it. Keeley disappears with the boys after they’ve helped clear the table, leaving Jo to chat with me. I hear them excitedly rummaging through one of the huge boxes of Lego they keep for their nieces and nephews when they visit from Kent.

‘Hope Barb hasn’t got wind of this open house,’ Jo says. ‘She’ll probably turn up and try to put people off.’ Her eyebrows rise impossibly high, making her bluey-green eyes wide and comical. She’s joking, I think, but the comment catches me off-guard. I hadn’t thought of that – my concern up until this point has been Davina.

‘Do you think she would?’

‘I really wouldn’t put it past her, Amber. You said yourself she doesn’t want you to leave – or the boys, at any rate – I’m sure she could come up with a way to warn off prospective buyers.’

I consider this for a minute. Barb can be a bit underhand sometimes; she likes to be in control – she was certainly infamous in her role as a local councillor during the Nineties. But I can’t see how she could possibly cause people to be put off.

‘What’s she going to do? Stand outside with a placard saying: “Don’t live here, it’s a terrible area”? No one would believe anything like that. And people would do their homework on the area prior to viewing, surely?’

‘Yeah. I was kidding really. Well – maybe I wasn’t, I don’t know. Sorry, I don’t mean to make you feel more uptight than you already are.’

‘It’s fine.’ My mind drifts. The house has been on the market for two months and there’s not been a jot of interest, yet other houses in the area have been sold during that time. Granted, two of those have been to the developers, but I’ve seen other sold signs too. Has Barb somehow been putting people off viewing my house? I mean, it’s not even like she’d have to do something herself; she could get someone else to cause issues. She knows almost the entire population of Stockwood by name, having spent her whole life in the village and making it her business to know any newcomers. Even though she’s moved to the complex, she still spends a fair amount of time in the village attending WI meetings, going to coffee mornings at the community hub and visiting her cronies. ‘Has she got someone on the inside?’