Lucy accepted gratefully and sat down in a shaded corner of the café where there was a breeze from the open window. The woman brought her the drink, ice-cold and delicious, and served it with a frankly curious gaze. “Are you Verity’s niece Lucy?” she asked directly. “We wondered if you really existed because no one had seen you.”

Lucy was slightly taken aback. There was something not quite friendly in her tone but she told herself she was being over-sensitive. “Hi,” she said. “Yes, I’m Lucy Brown. I’ve just been taking it easy for a few days, settling in, you know? It’s nice to have a rest.”

The girl nodded. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, but her tone sounded slightly grudging. “I’m Persis Redfern.” She looked about nineteen, tall, willowy with a wild burst of fair hair carelessly pulled back into a bun. She pulled a face. “Persis is a stupid name, I know, but my mum read a book with a heroine called Persis when she was pregnant and—” she shrugged “—that was that.”

It was an explanation Lucy felt she had probably given any number of times. “It sounds classical,” she said. “Unusual in an interesting way.”

“Thanks,” Persis said unenthusiastically. “Everyone calls me—”

“Sis?” A man poked his head around from the shop. “You’ve got customers.”

“There you go,” Persis said, shrugging again. “Sis. I ask you. Strangers think I’m related to the entire village. Still, one of my brothers is called Gabriel after the archangel, so he didn’t escape either. Can I get you anything else? A scone? Cake?”

“I’d love a chocolate croissant.” Lucy suddenly felt ravenous. “And I must have a browse in the shop when I’ve drunk my lemonade.”

“Sis!”

Persis pulled a face and sped away, leaving Lucy to finish the drink and look around at the café. It was compact but airy, painted white like the outside, and decorated with local art and crafts for sale. An amazing tapestry hung on the wall showing all the main features of the village; the church, the village hall, the war memorial, the row of thatched cottages... More amusingly it also featured various people’s dogs, a cow called Doris, some sheep and a pond with multicolored ducks. Gunpowder Cottage featured at the top left, and down a tapestry path into the hollow was the barn. It was completely charming.

“You should sell postcards of the tapestry,” Lucy said to Persis, when she came back with the croissant, butter and jam. “It’s amazing.”

“Loads of people worked on individual bits of it,” Persis said. She seemed to have recovered some good humor. “It’s a real piece of local storytelling.”

A group of hikers came in and she went over to take their order, leaving Lucy to savor the croissant. “Chocolate and butter,” Persis said with a grin, on her way back to the kitchens, “is there a finer combination?”

Lucy ate the croissant slowly, resisted the idea of having a second one and licked the chocolate off her fingers before wandering through to the shop to browse. The deli section had some amazing soups, salads, bread and cheeses; she reflected that it was fortunate the weather was so warm that she didn’t fancy hot food because she could live on this indefinitely. She added some cream cheese–stuffed peppers, some speckled eggs and some locally grown asparagus to her basket and went over to the counter where Persis was putting a chocolate flake in a cone with a double scoop of pistachio ice cream. She handed the cone to a small child. “There you are,” she said. “Enjoy!”