At Jess’s elbow in the bus stop, a man snaps opens a can of cider and she flinches as if a gun has gone off next to her head. Instinctively, her hand covers the lower half of her face and she fingers the scar bisecting her top lip. As if she’s turned the volume of the world down a few notches, Sheila’s voice fades. Only to rise again with a tone sharpened by exasperation. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yeah. Yes. And I’m grateful for the job . . . opportunity, Sheila. I need this. Izzy needs—’

‘You have your notes. Morag will brief you on the rest.’

As Jess scratches amongst thoughts scattered by the eruption of the cider can, to cobble together the assurance her employer seeks, Sheila ends the call.

The bus arrives and shudders to a halt. The queue collapses into a scrum about the doors.

Jess doesn’t move and stands apart from the disorder.

5

Bathed in sunlight golden enough to conjure a fancy that she might have stepped into another world, one she’d forgotten could exist, Jess walks tree-softened Sheaf Lane.

She might also have been painted into a fine artist’s vista. Each detached period building in the village of Eadric rears proudly behind a lawn as flat as a bowling green, or stands knee-deep in the kind of floral displays that are awarded trophies at flower shows. Tree blossom further enchants an atmosphere likely to arrest even the most preoccupied mind walking through it. And suffering no competition from traffic or human congress, only the fluting and whistling of birdsong pierces the warm air.

A little dazed, Jess peers at the wisteria-wreathed porches to identify numbers on houses that seem intent on being identified by individual names. Nerthus House is the one she seeks.

A sign on the garden wall of the sixth house on the left, The Old Vicarage, indicates that it is Nerthus House. A building so grand, yet imperiously sombre, that Jess is impelled to check the first page of the folder she carries to make sure it’s the right address. But this is it. Where she’s supposed to be. Handsome but funereal Nerthus House.

Self-conscious, she dithers as two elderly women pass on the other side of Sheaf Lane, each accompanied by a small dog. Her surprise turning to deference, Jess tidies her hair and appraises her simple, functional outfit. The women pause to study the outsider, increasing her discomfort. Unsure whether to laugh nervously or apologise for daring to find herself somewhere so pretty and old and affluent, Jess looks at the dog walkers.

Who walk on without a word.

She turns back to the vicarage and approaches the front door, moving as she might between the aisles of an old library favoured by fierce scholars.

Behind her back, the two elderly pedestrians pause and watch her until the front door of Nerthus House opens.

6