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palms together and touched her fingertips to her lips. She hardly knew where to start. At last she looked Mrs McFarland directly in the eye.
    ‘Margaret,’ she said. ‘I’d really rather you and your friends didn’t talk about me, speculate like this, behind my back.’
    ‘I didn’t mean any –’
    ‘I know you didn’t. You’ve been very welcoming, and a good friend to me. But I’m not looking for any relationship. Jake is my life now, and there isn’t room for anybody else. I certainly didn’t move to Pemberham looking for romance, or even a quick fling.’ Chloe felt her anger rising and fought it down. ‘Jake left a toy in Dr Carlyle’s consulting room, and the doctor found and returned it. That’s all we were talking about in the supermarket.’ Why was she justifying herself? What did it matter if a group of gossipy ladies invented stories about the new arrival in town? But Chloe realised it did matter. She was a professional person, hoping to develop a reputation as a journalist in Pemberham, and she didn’t need pigeonholing as the latest love interest of the handsome local doctor.
    Mrs McFarland looked appalled. She batted her palms against her forehead. ‘Oh, my word. I’ve been so foolish.’ The look of distress in her eyes made Chloe soften. ‘Please, please forgive me. I’m just an interfering old busybody. I should have kept my mouth shut. “Keep your mouth shut, and your mind open.” Isn’t that what they say? You’re absolutely right. It’s none of my business what you do.’
    Chloe sighed again, exasperated. ‘Margaret, no harm done. Don’t beat yourself up.’ She tried a smile on for size, found it easier than she’d thought. Mrs McFarland managed to return it.
    They changed the subject, and chatted for a few more minutes before Chloe gathered up Jake and took her leave, only a trace of awkwardness lingering in the air. It was only when she got back to her cottage that she fully realised what Margaret had said. It’s none of my business what you do. Did that mean the older woman still suspected her of being drawn to Dr Carlyle?
    Chloe decided against trying to work and settled instead for a vigorous spring clean of the cottage. As she threw herself into the tasks, she reflected that small-town life was going to be more complicated than she’d bargained for.
     
    ***
     
    With hindsight, and in the grip of a guilt so intense it felt suffocating, Chloe knew she should have consulted Dr Carlyle sooner.
    Nearly three weeks had passed since she and Jake had arrived, and their new life was shaping up nicely. The cottage was starting to feel like home, Jake had made friends with another little boy who lived a few streets away and whose mother Chloe had got to know in the local playground, and Chloe’s own work with the Pemberham Gazette was taking off. Her first article had proved enormously popular with the paper’s readers, and the editor, Mike Sellers, had just that week offered Chloe her own fortnightly column. Thus it was that Off The Beaten Track was born. She had the first draft already bashed out and was in the process of editing it.
    Jake had been subdued for the last few days. Listless and off his food, he’d been more clingy than usual, wanting to sit on Chloe’s lap when she was at her computer and proving reluctant to let her leave his room at night. She thought he might be missing some of his old friends from London, rudimentary though friendships were at his age.
    When he started digging in one ear she had a look down there as best she could, then at his throat. It looked reddened. She gave him children’s paracetamol and it seemed to perk him up for a few hours, but his fractiousness returned.
    On a Friday afternoon Chloe sat working while Jake had a nap in his room. She was jolted out of her musings by his wailing cry, and she raced through to find him sitting up in the dimness, clutching his neck. Drool soaked his arm and, she saw, the pillow on which he’d