My head buzzing, I leave my hiding place and carry on walking towards the optician’s shop. I don’t know how well I’ll function this afternoon – having had a stressful, eventful morning and now this. Before I take the left turn to reach the shop, I find myself turning and heading back the way I’ve just come. I’ve still got five minutes before I’m officially due to begin work – enough time to pop in and see Carl. I don’t have any plan for what I’m going to say, or the reason for me dropping in. I just feel the need to show my face.

‘Hello, Amber,’ Suzanne greets me as I walk up to her desk. ‘What can I do for you today?’

‘I’d like to talk to Carl, please.’

‘He’s not in at the moment. He’s gone to a new instruction in Bovey Tracey. Anything I can help with?’

She always asks this. There never is.

I hesitate for a moment, then decide to just lay it on the line. ‘Yes, possibly, Suzanne.’ I smile. ‘I see Barbara Miller, my mother-in-law, was here a moment ago. What did she want?’

Suzanne’s skin flushes pink, the glow rising from her neck to her cheeks. She pushes her long strands of white-blonde hair behind her ears, then shuffles some papers on her desk. This is the type of behaviour I’d categorise as decidedly dodgy.

‘I really don’t know, I’m sorry,’ Suzanne says without looking up at me. She’s still busying her hands with paperwork, attempting to look as though she has something purposeful to do right at this minute, rather than what she’s actually doing, which is stalling for time while she thinks up a lie. ‘She spoke with Carl, not me.’

‘You didn’t hear what they were talking about?’

Suzanne shoots me a look of dismay. ‘I don’t listen to conversations I’m not part of,’ she says, her voice clipped.

Liar. I mean, who doesn’t?

‘I wasn’t implying you were deliberately eavesdropping, but it’s not exactly a large space, is it? It’s not as though you could help overhearing?’ I pile on the sickly-sweet tone in an attempt to get her onside.

She’s having none of it.

‘No, it’s not a large space. However, I tend to get on with my work and don’t tune in to other people’s business. I zone out. It’s a gift. Comes from having children.’ Her manner is lighter now, and I feel bad grilling her as though she’s on trial. She may be telling the truth; I do the same thing with Finley and Leo sometimes, so it’s feasible that Suzanne does it too. Although, I can’t even imagine her having children – she seems far too immaculate; unharried.