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clique who’d allowed her husband, her Mark, the man to whom she’d pledged her life, to die. However unfair it was to him as an individual, while she could tolerate Dr Carlyle, she could never bring herself to trust him.
    Chloe drew up the covers and hoped sleep would come soon. Her hopes were in vain.

Chapter Three
     
    Chloe heard it through the open kitchen window, the awful harsh grinding of metal on tarmac. She’d just finished doing the breakfast dishes and was going to spend an hour reading to Jake before catching up with her emails and settling down to work.
    It was Saturday morning, five days after she and Jake had arrived in the town and three days since she’d sent her article to the Pemberham Gazette . The editor-in-chief had replied the next day, the tone of his email brimming with enthusiasm. He’d loved the piece, thought she struck just the right balance between self-deprecating wit and shrewd observations of the differences in country versus city outlooks, and wanted to run the article in next Monday’s edition. Best of all, if it was received well by the paper’s readers, he’d give serious consideration to commissioning a regular series of columns from her.
    Her own column! Chloe couldn’t help smiling in delight at the thought of it. Granted, it was a small-town weekly, not one of the big national papers. But it would be quite a feather in her cap, considering she’d been in town less than a week. And it would be a stepping stone to greater things. Already she was soaking in the details around her as she and Jake went about their daily lives in their new home, noting with a forensic eye the minutiae of Pemberham’s architecture, its rhythms, even the subtle quirks of its residents’ accents. All were potential raw material for her writing.
    The noise grated through her thoughts again. She craned to look out the window but the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere round the front of the cottage.
    Chloe swept Jake up from the floor and went to the front door. On the lane outside, a car Chloe recognised as Margaret McFarland’s, a somewhat clapped-out Volkswagen Beetle, was parked half-protruding from her neighbour’s driveway. Mrs McFarland stood beside it, staring down at it and muttering.
    Chloe joined her. The Beetle’s front passenger tyre was flat. More than that, the rim had eaten through the rubber and was naked against the tarmac. It explained the noise Chloe had heard.
    ‘Och,’ growled the older woman. ‘All I need. I was just reversing out to go and do the shopping when it happened. No warning.’
    Chloe thought the tyre must have been in a pretty threadbare state to begin with for the wheel to have broken through, but she didn’t say so. She asked, ‘Have you got a spare?’
    ‘No idea, pet,’ said Mrs McFarland without embarrassment.
    Chloe passed Jake to the other woman – he’d got used to her over the last few days, as she’d popped round on a daily basis – and popped the bonnet. She found the spare wheel in its well, and was thankful to note that the tyre was in pristine condition. Chloe located the jack and wrench and hefted everything out on to the road.
    ‘What are you doing, dear?’ asked Mrs McFarland, bouncing Jake on her arm.
    ‘Changing your wheel.’
    Mrs McFarland looked astonished. ‘Don’t we need to call someone for that?’
    ‘Why?’ Chloe found a rock to jam behind the rear wheel. ‘I’ve done it before.’
    The hardest part, as always, was loosening the wheel nuts, and Chloe had to brace her foot against the wrench and piston her leg to get some movement. It was a warm day for spring, and by the time she was winding the jack she felt her shirt clinging to her back. Beside her Mrs McFarland watched in fascinated silence.
    At the end, Chloe stood up, wiping the sweat from her face with the back of her arm, her hands and jeans grimed with grease. ‘All done,’ she said. ‘But you’ll need to get all the tyres replaced soon, I’m