Lucy took the hint. “I picked up more than I’d intended,” she said, looking dubiously at the shopping bags. “But it’s no wonder when there’s so much delicious food here.”

“We can deliver it all to the barn I suppose,” Persis offered. “That’s quite a lot to carry, especially with you having been ill. I’ll keep the flowers in water, if you like, and bring the bags down at the end of my shift.”

It felt like an olive branch after her previous shortness and Lucy took it as such. “That’s so kind of you,” she said, wondering at the same time who had told Persis she’d been ill. No doubt it was something else that the whole village knew, though she couldn’t imagine either Verity or Finn gossiping about her.

“No problem,” Persis said. “If you want to take a look at the heritage center while you’re up here,” she added, “it’s in the old schoolroom, just around the corner on Church Street. It’s got the original historical map that inspired the village tapestry. I have to give it a shout-out,” she added, “because Gabe works there but to be honest it’s not much to write home about.”

“Who? Oh, your brother.” Lucy found the half-hearted recommendation amusing. She hadn’t been intending to explore the village that day but thought that as she didn’t have any bags to carry home she might as well take a look around. It would be interesting to see what had changed in the fifteen years since she was last in there, not that she remembered it terribly well.

Someone else came into the shop and Lucy smiled her thanks and went out into the sunshine. The shrieks of children at the playground nearby taken with the brightness of the day, the chatter of groups at the picnic tables on the green and the scent of barbecues made her feel a part of the life of the village. She’d worried that she might be lonely, sequestered down at Gunpowder Barn, but instead she felt a surprising sense of connection.

She turned right along the road into the middle of the village, over the crossroads and past the Knights of Old Pub, which featured a sign showing a fearsome-looking crusader wielding a broadsword. Persis’s directions were decidedly inaccurate for there was no museum or heritage center in sight, only rows of chocolate box thatched cottages on either side of the street, built from the local white chalk, festooned with hollyhocks and delphiniums. Really, Lucy thought, could any village be as picture-perfect as Knightstone appeared? Then she saw the brown sign indicating a museum pointing right, opposite the church, and turning down the lane, the long low outline of the former schoolhouse was revealed. It had been smartly renovated with big windows and fresh white paint, as though trying to tempt visitors inside, and as Lucy approached, a man of about her own age popped out, rake thin, tall and slightly stooped. Lucy wondered whether he deliberately tried to minimize his height or if he spent much of his time hunched over books.