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‘Suse? Are you OK?’

‘Hm?’ Susie looked up from her old laptop, one knee hugged in against her chest as she scoured the South Hams County Council website. ‘Oh hey, didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I know. You didn’t hear me offer you a cup of coffee or then tea or then a nice line of cocaine.’ Temperance made her way to her desk.

‘Huh?’

The big sister slumped down into her chair. ‘What on earth is up with you? I haven’t seen you reading anything that intently since you did drama at school and someone told you there was a swear word in the play.’ Her face suddenly pulled into a serious expression. ‘Did something happen last night? You can tell me anything, you know that.’

Susie slowly creaked the laptop shut and pulled her oversized denim shirt more closely around her middle. She’d felt chilly at 2am this morning and she’d stayed that way ever since. ‘Well. Yes.’

‘Yes?’ Temperance’s voice yelped nervously.

‘Nothing bad like that. For me. But maybe bad. For all of us.’ Susie shut her eyes and tugged at her long red hair, now in desperate need of a wash after being sweatily crammed under a wig last night.

‘Wha . . . what?! Did you carry on drinking after I left?’

‘Nope. But I wish I had. I wish I had been drunk so my senses were numb, and then I wouldn’t have read it.’

Susie didn’t need to elaborate that she didn’t mean a text or a newspaper headline. Temperance knew exactly the kind of reading unique to their family that could turn your heart inside out and pull it through your ribs.

Temperance went to the kettle. ‘You start talking. I’ll start brewing.’

When they were down to the last sips of sugary builder’s tea, Susie finally took a breath. ‘So he wants the village. For something super ambitious. And I need to find out what that is. Fast.’

‘OK. OK.’ Temperance was staring into the bottom of her mug. ‘Let me just . . . get to grips with this. You didn’t feel anything from what he was wearing earlier on in the night? And when you were, you know . . .’

‘Sucking his face off?’ Susie replied sardonically. ‘Nope, nothing then. I didn’t exactly have my head in the game. So now I’m thinking maybe they were new things he bought to dress up in. I don’t know. Ughhhh.’ She threw her head back and smacked her palms on the desk. ‘He asked me question after question about the village, about the pub, and I just cockily though “Ooooh he’s so into me!” And all that time he was just snooping around to get some sort of advantage! How up myself could I be?!’ Susie buried her head in her hands and was quickly wrapped up in a big hug.

‘You’re not up yourself. Not at all. He really got to you, didn’t he?’

Susie felt her cheekbones burn with shame. ‘It was something totally different with Mark. The hot bits were . . . incendiary. But also when we talked . . . he really got me. He listened to my plan to go to San Sebastian next year; he seemed to genuinely love the village as much as we do. But it turns out that he only loves it for its profit margins.’ Her mouth screwed up into a knot.

‘Before you recruit an angry mob, remember that we don’t actually know what Mark is up to. Before we write him off as a moustache-twirling bad guy, we need some facts.’

Susie surfaced from the reassuring folds of Temperance’s bright green cardi. ‘But I’m not going on a date with him either, until I know. Even if he does kiss like a bloody Greek God.’

‘Completely fair. I wouldn’t either. Don’t let things get messy and tangled.’ Temperance went back to her chair with a weariness Susie didn’t pick up on.

‘I need proof of what he’s up to, but how am I going to find it? It’s not like I can frisk him to see if any diabolical plans just fall out of his pocket. And if he is up to anything dodge he’s not just going to spill the beans, is he?’ Her hands wheeled in the air. ‘I don’t know what to do next. But I need to do something.’

‘We could ask Mum?’

Susie ran her tongue along her teeth. ‘Let’s not bother her unless we really have to. She’s probably still finding her feet with the job. Right: the second homers want an extension or a new conservatory or whatever, they have to get council planning. The council have to know if big changes are happening in the village. Who do we know on the parish council?’

‘Gary! He joined last year, I think.’

‘I’m on it!’ Susie slipped on her trainers, grabbed her phone and legged it out the door.

Temperance found herself staring after her for ten good minutes. ‘I can’t say I hate the new-found focus, Suse, but I had thought we’d run the shop together today. Oh, and my night? Thanks for asking. I’m pretty sure I let the love and lust in my costume kickstart a really hot dance with who turned out to be Abel, who then rejected me in no uncertain terms, with the Backstreet Boys for a soundtrack. Great night. Epic. One for the record books.’ She pursed her lips and went to boil the kettle again.

The queue running out of Gary’s bakery and onto the gravel path was agonisingly slow today, maybe because Susie had lost all patience while the weight of the world was on her shoulders, or maybe because all of East Prawle were catastrophically hungover and in need of fresh sugary carbs.

‘Hey, Suse. Thought you would have still been dead to the world this morning.’

Susie turned to see Will, one of the campsite guys she’d met alongside Mark a few nights ago. ‘Oh, hey. No rest for the wicked, you know? Um, you’re not with Mark, are you?’

He rubbed his chin. ‘No, he headed back to Salcombe this morning.’