I’m halfway through a laborious three-point turn in the narrow aisle between the shelves, realising too late that I should have backed out, the way I came in, when the bell at the entrance clangs.

I turn to look over my shoulder. For a moment I don’t recognise the figure in the doorway, but when I do, my heart leaps suddenly inside my chest like a bird beating hopelessly against a cage.

His clothes are stained and crumpled, as if he’s slept in them, and there is a bruise on his cheekbone, cuts on his knuckles. But what strikes me, like a blow to the centre of my chest, is how much he has changed – and yet how little. He was always tall, but the lanky slenderness has gone, and the man standing there now fills the narrow entrance with his shoulders, exuding, without even trying, a sense of lean, contained strength.

But his face, the broad cheekbones, the narrow lips, and oh, God, his eyes …

I stand, stupid with the shock, trying to catch my breath, and he doesn’t see me at first, just nods a greeting to Mary and stands back, waiting politely for me to exit the shop. It’s only when I say his name, my voice husky and faltering, that his head jerks up, and he looks, really looks, for the first time, and his face changes.

‘Isa?’ Something falls to the floor, the keys he was holding in one hand. His voice is just as I remember it, deep and slow, with that strange little offbeat twist, the only trace of his mother tongue. ‘Isa, is it – is it really you?’

‘Yes.’ I try to swallow, try to smile, but the shock seems to have frozen the muscles in my face. ‘I – I thought you were – didn’t you go back to France?’

His expression is rigid, impassive, his golden eyes unreadable, and there is something a little stiff in his voice, as if he’s holding something in check.

‘I came back.’

‘But why – I don’t understand, why didn’t Kate say …?’

‘You’d have to ask her that.’

This time, I’m sure I’m not imagining it, there is definite coldness in his tone.

I don’t understand. What has happened? I feel like I’m groping blindly in a room filled with fragile, precious objects, tilting and rocking with every false step I make. Why didn’t Kate tell us Luc was back? And why is he so … But here I stop, unable to put a name to the emotion that’s radiating from Luc’s silent presence. What is it? It’s not shock – or not completely, not now the surprise of my presence has worn off. It’s a coiled, contained sort of emotion that I can tell he is trying to hold back. An emotion closer to …

The word comes to me as he takes a step forward, blocking my exit from the shop.

Hate.

I swallow.

‘Are you … are you well, Luc?’

‘Well?’ There is a laugh in his voice, but there’s no trace of mirth. ‘Well?’

‘I just –’

‘How the fuck can you ask that?’ he says, his voice rising.

‘What?’ I try to step back, but there is nowhere to go – Mary Wren is close behind me. Luc is blocking the doorway, with the pram between us, and all I can think of is that if he lashes out, it will be Freya who gets hurt. What has happened to change him so much?

‘Calm down, Luc,’ Mary says warningly from behind me.

‘Kate knew.’ Luc’s voice is shaking. ‘You knew what she was sending me back to.’

‘Luc, I didn’t – I couldn’t –’ My fingers are gripping the handle of Freya’s pram, the knuckles white. I want so badly to get out of this shop. There is a buzzing in my head, a bluebottle battering senselessly at the window, and I am reminded suddenly and horribly of the mutilated sheep, the flies around its spilled guts …

He says something in French that I don’t understand, but it sounds crude, and full of disgust.

‘Luc,’ Mary says more loudly, ‘step out of the way, and get a hold of yourself, unless you want me to call Mark?’

There is a silence, filled with waiting and the noise of the fly, and I feel my fingers tightening on the handle of the pram. And then Luc takes a slow, exaggerated step back, and waves a hand towards the doorway.

‘Je vous en prie,’ he says sarcastically.

I push the pram roughly, bashing the front against the door frame with a jolt that makes Freya wake with a startled cry, but I don’t stop. I shove us both through, the door closing behind us with a jangling in my ears. And I storm up the street, putting as much distance as I can between us and that shop, until village buildings are just distant shapes, far off through the heat-hazed summer air, before I pick up my crying baby and hold her to my chest.

‘It’s OK,’ I hear myself muttering shakily in her ear, holding her to my shoulder with one hand, as I steer the pram jerkily along the dusty road back to the Mill. ‘It’s OK, the nasty man didn’t hurt us, did he? What do they say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? There, there, sweetheart. Oh, there, there, Freya. Don’t cry, honey. Please don’t cry.’

But she won’t be comforted. She cries and cries, the wailing siren of an inconsolable child, woken with a shock from contented sleep. And it’s only when the drops fall onto the top of Freya’s head that I notice I am crying myself, and I don’t even know why. Is it shock? Or anger? Or just relief that we are out of there?

‘There, there,’ I repeat, senselessly, in time with my feet on the pavement, and I no longer know if I’m talking to Freya or myself. ‘It’s going to be OK. I promise. It’s all going to be OK.’

But even as I’m saying the words, and breathing in the scent of her soft, sweaty hair, the smell of warm, cared-for baby, Mary’s words come back to me, ringing in my ears like an accusation.

Little liar.

Rule Three

Don’t Get Caught

LITTLE LIAR.

Little liar.

The words sound in time with my footsteps on the pavement as I half walk, half jog out of Salten, their pitch rising with Freya’s siren cries.

At last, maybe half a mile outside the village, I can’t take it any more – my back is on fire with carrying her, and her cries drill into my head like nails. Little liar. Little liar.

I stop by the dusty side of the road, put the brake on the pram and sit on a log, where I unclip my nursing bra and put Freya to my breast. She gives a glad little shriek and throws up her chubby hands, but before she latches on, she pauses for a moment, looking up at me with her bright blue eyes, and she smiles, and her expression is so very clearly Honestly! I knew you’d get the hint eventually that I can’t help but smile back, though my back is sore, and my throat hurts from swallowing down my rage and fear at Luc.

Little liar.

The words come floating back through the years to me, and as Freya feeds, I shut my eyes, remembering. Remembering how it started.

It was January, bleak and cold, and I was just back from a miserable holiday with my father and brother – unspoken words over hard, dry turkey, and presents that my mother hadn’t chosen, with her name written in my father’s handwriting.

Thea and I came down together from London, but we missed the train we were supposed to catch, and consequently the connection with the school minibus at the station. I stood under the waiting-room canopy, sheltering from the cold wind, smoking a cigarette while Thea rang the school office to find out what we should do.

‘They’ll be here at five thirty,’ Thea reported back, as she hung up, and we both looked up at the big clock hanging over the platform. ‘It’s barely even four. Bollocks.’

‘We could walk?’ I said doubtfully. Thea shook her head, shivering as the wind cut across the platform.

‘Not with cases.’

As we were waiting, trying to decide what to do, another train came in, this one the local stopping train from Hampton’s Lee, carrying all the schoolkids who went to Hampton Grammar. I looked, automatically, for Luc, but he wasn’t there. He was either staying late for some extracurricular thing, or skiving. Both were more than possible.

Mark Wren was though, shambling down the platform in his habitual hunch, his bowed head displaying the painful-looking acne on the back of his neck.