After chatting to Verity she fancied a cup of tea but found that she’d run out of milk. It was time—finally—to walk into the village and stock up on her supplies at the shop. She felt an odd combination of apprehension and excitement to be venturing out after a week on her own. It made her laugh wryly. Only a week of her own company and she was already turning into a hermit.

Lucy put on her espadrilles, grabbed her bag and headed out of the door. The cool of the early morning had long gone and she went back for a sun hat and a pair of huge sunglasses. The barn, it transpired, had a number of locked storage cupboards where Verity kept everything from bin liners to antihistamines, including plenty of spare clothes and accessories.

“Help yourself to anything you like,” she’d told Lucy. “And if you need stuff from the cottage, I’m sure Finn wouldn’t mind. He might even invite you round for supper.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Lucy had said quickly, and Verity had laughed as though she had known somehow that Lucy was deliberately avoiding Finn.

The public footpath from the road by the cottage led downhill and past the front of Gunpowder Barn before heading up the other side of the valley directly into Knightstone village. It was slightly longer but much quieter than taking the road. At first it wound through a small beech wood that bordered the duck pond, but then it forked right, a paved track lined with high hawthorn hedges interwoven with wild dog roses, brambles and convolvulus. Foxgloves and valerian sprouted along the ragged edge of the grass and the sweet scent of vanilla from the flowers hung faintly in the air.

As she walked, Lucy thought back over what Verity had said about Robert Catesby. Was it really a coincidence that he had lived at Gunpowder Cottage and that his wife had been called Catherine? Despite the heat of the day, Lucy felt a chill ripple of unease as she remembered her dreams. A woman called Catherine, in Tudor costume... Yet surely if the barn was haunted, someone else would have seen the ghost, and there was no suggestion that anyone had.

The sound of children’s voices drew her back to the present and she saw that the fields that bordered the path were giving way to newly built houses. The scent of flowers was replaced by the more varied smells of barbecues, hot tarmac and mown grass. Another path opened out on the left, leading to a neat village green and children’s playground. This was all new since Lucy had last visited Knightstone so she walked slowly over the grass to the car park, where she also found a long white-painted building that proclaimed itself the village shop and café.

The relative darkness inside the shop after the bright sunlight outside made Lucy blink and feel slightly dizzy. By the time she focused a young woman had come out from the back of the shop and was smiling at her. “Hello! Would you like some homemade lemonade? It’s a hot day to be out walking in the full sun.”