Robin and Ruth, The Olde Jug’s new owners, have become our close friends, even though we no longer bankrupt ourselves eating their Sunday roasts and Friday fish-and-chip suppers every week. I’ve told Dom I know they’ll understand, and they will.

“Well, I don’t,” he says. “Why not ring Lewis from the car, if you don’t want to do it in our house?” he asks as we walk across the green to the pub. It’s an odd-looking building: tall and narrow, with a white-painted brick frontage and red-painted stonework above and below the windows. It doesn’t look like a typical village-green pub.

“With people strolling past, nosy villagers knocking on the window, dogs barking on the green?” I say. “No thanks. I want to be in a quiet room, alone, where I know Zan and Ben aren’t going to stick their heads around the door and yell, ‘Can we go into town and get a Nando’s?’”

“You’re building this up too much, Beth. Going to a special place to make the call . . .”

“Dom, I’m nipping across the green, that’s all. I mean, here we are.”

“You’re hoping and secretly believing that Lewis Braid is going to tell you something mind-blowing that solves everything, and you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I want to be able to focus, that’s all.”

I’ve never said so to Dom in case it would sound disloyal, but I can’t concentrate at home—not on anything important that requires focus, not while Zannah and Ben are in the house and awake. That’s why I do my work admin late at night. Teenagers are even worse than nosy villagers when it comes to smashing through your carefully constructed boundaries.

The Olde Jug is quiet and smells temptingly of roast beef. Soon it will start to fill up with all those who have booked for dinner. There are no tables in the bar area, and the restaurant part of the pub is relatively small—only one room, now with a conservatory extension which has enabled a few more tables to be added—and needs to be booked several weeks in advance. Little Holling folk complain furiously if they’ve found themselves eating near people who look as if they’re from Somewhere Else, even though there’s no rule stating that priority should be given to those who live closest.

Robin and Ruth live in a two-bedroom flat above the pub. They’re happy for me to use it to make my call, as I knew they would be. “Don’t even ask,” Dominic says over his shoulder to Robin as we head upstairs.

“He didn’t ask,” I mutter.

“Living room or kitchen?” Dom asks.

“Kitchen.”

“Shall we make a cup of tea?”

“No. I’m ringing him now.” I want to get it over with, whatever it turns out to be.

A few seconds later, I hear a voice I haven’t heard for twelve years. “Beth Leeson!”

“How did you know it was me?”

“International call. Actually, you’re right—as a hotshot CEO, I get loads of international calls.” Lewis has always done this: mocking his own boastfulness at the same time as indulging it to the full. “But I’ve been waiting for you to call since I sent you my number. How are things? How’s Dom and the kids?”

“Fine. We’re all fine. How . . . how are things with you?” There’s a lag after each of us speaks.

“Amazing, thanks. The kids are so American now, you’d barely recognize them.”

I close my eyes. When I open them, Dominic is gesturing for me to put my phone on speaker so that he can hear Lewis’s side of the conversation. I shake my head. The look I get in response tells me I’m being silly, but I don’t care. I’m not risking pressing a button that might cut Lewis off.

“Flora’s doing great. Loves the climate here. Keeps saying she can’t believe she put up with the gray, gloomy English weather for so long. When are you guys gonna get your lazy asses out here to visit us?”

Another classic Lewis Braid move: making you feel guilty for not accepting an invitation you never received.

“Do you ever come back to the UK?”

“Yeah, when we can. We were back for Christmas, stayed with Flora’s parents. They’re still in their little place in Wokingham. Bit of a squeeze with seven of us!”

Seven. Lewis, Flora, Thomas, Emily, Flora’s parents . . . and Georgina. She has to be the seventh person. Still, no harm in checking . . .

“How old is Georgina now?”

“She’s twelve. Terrifying how quick time passes, isn’t it? Did you and Dominic ever have any more?”

“More time?” I’m confused.

“No, more children. Though, come to think of it . . .” Lewis laughs. “God, what I wouldn’t give for more time. Bet you’re the same. Remember before we had kids, how we used to spend whole days lying around by the river, or watching movies?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, enough about the past! As my favorite life coach always says: memories of the past are not the past. They’re thoughts you have in the present, about the past.”

I shiver. Dominic mouths “What?” I turn away from him so that I’m not distracted. Lewis talking about the present and the past makes me feel . . .

What? That he’s more likely to have frozen his children in time to prevent them from aging? Ridiculous.

“Your favorite life coach?” I say, forcing out a laugh. “How many do you have?”

“I don’t see them, I just listen to their podcasts. But enough about my perfect life in sunny Florida—tell me what you’ve been up to. Are you working again, or still a slacker?”

I’d forgotten this: that Lewis described it as “slacking” when Flora and I gave up our jobs to look after our babies. He loved that joke; it became one of his regulars. I never minded it. It was like his boasting: so outrageous, we all assumed he didn’t mean it.

Except Flora.

I didn’t think of it at the time, but now I wonder: was that why she always looked worried and said, “Lew-is,” while Dom and I were busy saying, “It’s fine—we don’t take him seriously”? Was Flora scared he was revealing too much of his true character?

“No, I’m working,” I say.

“Aha! Hunting heads again!”

“I’m not in recruitment anymore. I retrained as a massage therapist.”

Lewis laughs loudly. “A masseur! You mean a hooker, right? Is that what this call’s about? Are you a hooker hoping for a handout from an old friend? Or, should I say, a hand job? No, wait—that’s the wrong way around. If you’re a hooker, you’d be offering me a hand job. I’m mixing up my hooker metaphors.”

I do some fake laughing and try to move the conversation on, but Lewis insists on knowing what I actually do, if not hookering. I explain to him about trigger-point massage, what led me to it, the principles involved. “Hmm,” he says when I’ve finished. “Reckon you could sort out my tennis arm?”

“Definitely,” I say. “What about Flora? Is she working now, or—”

“Hardly. She’s committed to slacking for life.”

“You know, I . . . I drove past your old house.”

“The Newnham flat? How’s it looking these days?”

“No, the house you moved to afterward. In Hemingford Abbots.”

“Wyddial Lane?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell were you doing there?”

My heart thuds. Is he suspicious? No. He’s just being Lewis.

“Ben’s football team was playing nearby, in St. Ives, and I took a wrong turn on the way. I recognized the street name from the change-of-address card you sent when you moved.” Shit. That sounded so obviously like a lie. I hold my breath, waiting for Lewis to question it.

Instead, he says cheerfully, “So, you really think you could un-fuck my arm? I’ve tried sports massage. Didn’t work.”

“Because the trigger points in your shoulder and neck need releasing, probably. Your arm is where the effects are manifesting, but not where the problem’s located.” It’s hugely frustrating that so many people charging for massages all over the world don’t know this basic fact.

“What the fuck?” Dominic murmurs behind me. I wave my arm frantically: sign language for “Be quiet or leave.”

“Inneresting. Hey, Flora!” Lewis yells. “Guess who’s on the phone? Beth Leeson! She reckons she can sort out my tennis arm!”

“Can I speak to Flora too?” I ask, my throat suddenly dry.

“You trying to get rid of me, Beth?”

“Haha. No, not at all. I mean after.”

“She’s in the bath. Hang on, she’s getting out. Seriously, though, you should all come over and stay with us. We’ve got a three-bedroom guesthouse in our garden, a swimming pool, a tennis court. You’d have fun! Oh, wait, here’s Flora.”

I hear a woman’s voice in the background. I can’t hear what exactly she’s saying—something about being lucky, I think—but . . . it sounds like Flora.

How can it be her?

“What, hon?” Lewis calls out. “Can’t you do that later? Oh, okay. Beth, she’ll ring you back in five, ten minutes. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I say.

Lucky. Where have I heard that word recently?

“Sit tight. And get your diary ready. Let’s schedule a visit for y’all to the good old US of A!” The line goes dead.

I put my phone down on Ruth and Robin’s kitchen table.

“That’s it?” says Dom.

“No. Flora’s ringing me back.”

“When? Can we go home, and you talk to her there?”

“No, she’s ringing in five minutes, Lewis said. Dom, I heard her. In the background. Well, I heard a woman. It sounded like Flora.”