After lunch, while Elodie was sleeping, I sat down with a coffee to check my emails. A message had come through from my editorial contact at Avon Life, asking if I’d be interested in writing another article for the magazine. I hadn’t written a thing since Elodie’s birth, and seriously wondered if I’d be capable of applying myself with everything that was going on. I was deliberating over my response when the phone rang out, making me jump.

‘Stina Mason? Conrad Lewis here, dealing with Mrs Barley’s affairs?’

‘Oh, hello, Mr Lewis. What can I do for you?’

‘I wonder if it would be possible for you to come into the office – at your convenience, of course. There is something I would like you to see.’

It seemed like a valid excuse to escape the four walls for a while and I didn’t hesitate. Thankfully, Jack had ridden his bike into work that morning and left the car. I gathered up a drowsy Elodie and stuffed a few of her necessary accoutrements into a bag, before putting Jobie into the kitchen. He looked up at me, his eyes doleful.

‘I’ll be back soon, don’t worry.’

I informed the policemen that I had an urgent appointment with my solicitor and strapped Elodie, now fully awake, into her car seat. I couldn’t imagine what further information Mr Lewis could have to impart and wondered what it might be that he wanted to show me. It all felt very cloak-and-dagger.

The solicitors’ office, ‘Brain, Lewis and Lewis’, was a narrow Georgian townhouse, situated in a small row of shops, some ten minutes’ drive from Avoncote. It was on a quiet side street, just outside the village of Shottery, famous for being the home of Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway.

Mr Lewis, impeccably dressed and upright as ever, greeted me at the door and showed me through the wood-panelled reception into a small, stuffy room overlooking a tiny courtyard to the rear of the building. Bouncing Elodie on my knee, I sat in front of his green leather-inlaid desk, watching the abundance of dust motes dancing in a shaft of light that poured through the sash window.

He looked flustered.

‘Mrs Mason, I have something for you. I’m terribly sorry, it appears to have been previously overlooked; I’m not sure how.’ From his sheepish expression, I wondered if he had been reprimanded for his error by the practice’s senior partner, Mr Brain, whose formidable heavy-browed countenance glared down from his portrait just inside the entrance.

‘Mrs Barley left explicit instructions that this was to be handed to you in the event of her death. It has been in our safe for several months now. I – we – must have missed it somehow, when we were going through her other documents.’