I must have been unusually quiet because, after dinner, Jack pulled me onto his lap as I attempted to clear the plates from the table. He planted a kiss on the back of my neck.

‘What’s got into you this evening? You’ve looked as if you’re miles away ever since I got home.’

I took a deep breath. ‘I went round for a cup of tea with Mrs Barley earlier. She was acting … strangely. She gave me the impression that the village isn’t really a very nice place to live, and that the people round here can be a vicious bunch.’

He shifted under my weight and turned me to face him. ‘Really? Did she elaborate?’

‘From everything she said, I think she’s felt, well, hounded. I mean, after Lucy going on about her, and that woman at the fair, and the old boy in the pub, and what Bob said, too. It sounds as if some of the villagers have really had it in for her – and I get the impression that they’ve made her life a misery over the years. I don’t understand why. I mean, she’s a harmless old woman. Isn’t she? It’s really weird.’

Jack’s brow furrowed. He smoothed a stray lock of hair away from my cheek. ‘Maybe there are a lot of parochial idiots round here. Or maybe there’s actually something we don’t know about her. It’s not impossible. I mean, I can’t believe that anyone would hold it against someone in this day and age, just because they’d been cohabiting with someone. It’s such a ridiculous, old-fashioned attitude. I doubt anyone really thinks that way any more. There has to be more to it.’

I shook my head. I couldn’t – no, didn’t want to – believe that there was something more sinister going on beneath our neighbour’s kindly façade.

‘But what? No, I don’t buy it. She’s always seemed so nice – I can’t believe she’d be capable of anything bad. I think it’s more likely that they’re just that – provincial and petty. Some people can be horrible.’

He nodded, but the cogs were obviously turning in his mind. ‘See if you can find out anything else from that Lucy, next time you see her. Mrs Barley’s always been nothing but decent with us. Even if she has done something, it must’ve been a very long time ago. The past is a foreign country, as the saying goes.’

The past can have a way of catching up with us, though. I shuddered as the thought flashed through my head. No one is without the odd skeleton in their closet. And although I didn’t want to think ill of our neighbour, a seed of doubt had been planted.

You don’t really know me. That was what she had said.