The village was sleepy, with hanging baskets outside the cottages, a pub, a post office and a plaque that read: Best Kept Wiltshire Village 2004. When he got to the house – a stone-built cottage, with a thatched roof and mullioned windows – it was Nick who appeared in the low doorway. She was wearing a soft mauve dress, her highheeled boots replaced with turquoise Chinese slippers she must have borrowed. She kept putting her fingers to her lips to get him to keep his voice down. Janice’s mum and sister were upstairs in the bedroom and Cory had taken off, no one was quite sure where. ‘And Janice?’ Nick made a face. ‘You’d better come to the back.’ She took him through the low-ceilinged cottage, past an inviting fire dancing in the grate, two Labradors asleep in front of it, and out into the cold of the back terrace. Here the back lawns sloped away to where a low hedge met the great oolite plain at the south of the Cotswolds, its furrowed fields lay frosty, the skies lead grey.
