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that you’ve seemed a bit distracted these last few days.”
    â€œDistracted? Not really.” She managed a smile. “Not more than usual.”
    â€œOkay, then.” Janice smiled, and suppressing the uncomfortable pang of guilt she always felt at leaving her mother stranded in her bed, Rachel left the room.
    Outside the sun was just starting to set, and Rachel could feel a gathering chill in the air. She dug her hands into the pockets of her coat and hurried down the street towards the Hangman’s Noose.
    As soon as she entered the pub, the warmth and noise fell over her like a comforting blanket. She smiled and nodded to several people already clustered around the small tables and shouldered her way to the long bar of scarred oak, propping her elbows on its surface as she gazed up at Rob Telford.
    He was pulling pints with practiced ease, and his gaze flicked to Rachel’s sweater for a millisecond before returning to her face. “What can I get you, Rach?”
    â€œDon’t you know my order yet?” Rachel answered with a flirty smile, and she saw surprise flicker in his eyes. She didn’t usually flirt with Rob, or with anyone, and her question had probably come out a bit aggressively. She was definitely out of practice with this kind of thing. Then Rob gave a slow smile in response. Maybe she could do this, after all. Rob wasn’t a bad-looking bloke, with dark hair and a slightly gap-toothed smile. He’d been a tearaway in school, but he’d settled down since taking over the pub.
    â€œLucy’s already ordered your table a bottle of red,” he said as he pushed two foaming pints of ale across the bar to a stony-faced sheep farmer in a flat cap and mud-splattered dungarees. “You’re late.”
    â€œNot that late.” Rachel glanced towards the table in the corner that had always belonged to her team. She, Juliet and Lucy Bagshaw, and Abby Rhodes from the beach café had been coming every Thursday for the quiz for nearly six months now. They hadn’t won yet, but they’d come close. And more importantly, they’d all had a laugh.
    She could see Lucy’s cloud of frizzy hair above the crowds, and as she caught sight of Rachel, Lucy waved enthusiastically, gesturing to the bottle of wine already on the table.
    â€œLooks like you’ve got an extra at your table tonight,” Rob remarked.
    â€œAn extra?”
    He nodded towards the table in the corner. “Lucy’s one for picking up strays, isn’t she? Although that was your brief, back in school.”
    Rachel stiffened. “What on earth are you talking about?”
    Rob pulled another pint. “Claire West,” he said, and feeling as if she’d swallowed a stone, Rachel turned back to look at the table in the corner and saw what she’d missed before: Claire West seated next to Lucy.

4

Claire
    This had been a mistake. Claire realized that as soon as she stepped into the pub and the noise of the place hit her like a smack in the face. She nearly stumbled right back out the door, because she’d never been good with crowds. When Hugh had taken her to parties, she’d spent the whole time either in the ladies’ or craning her head forward, attempting to catch what everyone was saying, trying to keep up, or at least appear as if she were.
    Before she could move, Lucy was calling to her from across the entire pub. “Claire! Claire, over here.”
    The crowd of people blurred before her into one unfriendly mass; she saw a few farmers hunched over their pints, looking resolutely uninterested, a couple of women dolled up and avidly curious. She lifted her chin and started to move through the crowds.
    â€œYou came.” Lucy looked delighted, which seemed a bit weird. Claire barely knew this woman, and she hadn’t done much to recommend herself to Lucy Bagshaw, except for not dropping a tin of beans on her foot.
    â€œI came,” she agreed