‘I don’t think Joe would just make something like that up,’ I answered, still deliberating the fact that the pair of them were privately in touch.

I wondered how Sam would react if he knew his girlfriend was exchanging late-night texts with her ex, especially given who the ex was.

‘I guess not,’ she sighed. ‘You aren’t too disappointed, are you?’

‘Me?’ I frowned.

‘Yes,’ Hope carried on. ‘He said he would have let you know if he could, but as you’ve refused to so much as even turn your mobile on since you arrived in the village, he had no way of contacting you. What’s that all about, Tess?’

Clearly, she and Joe had talked and messaged about a whole lot more than just his decision not to come to the party. Perhaps their conversation in the lane wasn’t the only time they’d got together for a bit of a catch-up.

‘Have you really abandoned your phone?’

‘Pretty much,’ I told her, knowing there was no point in denying it because if I was still a slave to my screen then I would have had it with me, and it was nowhere in sight.

‘But why?’ she asked.

‘Lots of reasons really,’ I began, ‘but mostly because I felt I needed a proper break from it,’ I carried on. ‘I decided the day I arrived here in Wynmouth that I would be eschewing all technology for the duration of my stay. No emails, no texts and no social media.’

She narrowed her eyes and chewed thoughtfully on the end of her pen. It was an annoying habit and I knew someone else who did it, but for the moment I couldn’t think who it was.

‘Everyone thinks that their lives have to revolve around their phones,’ I carried on when she didn’t say anything, ‘and to a certain extent I suppose they do these days, but I’ve found the ban truly liberating. It’s done me the power of good not to be constantly checking and updating.’

I didn’t point out that I had needed to borrow her mother’s laptop on more than one occasion since my arrival because that had never been for private use. Logging on courtesy of Sophie had happened purely so I could help her, Sam and the village.

‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ Hope smiled as she released the pen long enough to speak. ‘To be honest, I’m relieved we were wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ I frowned again, ‘about what?’

‘Well,’ she confided, fixing me with her pretty dark eyes, ‘we were beginning to think that the reason you weren’t using your phone and were hiding out here in Wynmouth was because you’d run away from something.’

I wondered who the ‘we’ was that she was referring to – her and Sam or her and Joe, or her and the pair of them or perhaps even the entire village.