Five months later

Lindsey Parish, skimming through the glossy pages of Chiltern Life, glanced up as her twin put a mug of coffee on the table.

'Nothing of yours in this month?'

'No.' Rona brought her own mug and sat down opposite her. 'Barnie wants to spread them out a bit.' Barnie Trent was the magazine's features editor.

'But you're still on the single-mothers series?'

'Only just, I'm reaching the end of the line. Possibly one more, to round it off.'

Lindsey's continued flicking brought her to the cookery feature and she paused, tapping a nail against the writer's name. 'I appreciate you never read this ...' Rona's dislike of cooking was legendary and Max was the chef in that household, '... but do you know Nicole Summers? Personally, I mean?'

Rona shook her head. 'I'm freelance, remember. I don't come into contact with the other contributors.'

'Apparently she also runs a cookery school,' Lindsey said. 'I met her ex last week. Steve knows him from work and we bumped into him and his girlfriend at a concert.'

In the last month or so Steven Hathaway had featured more than once in Lindsey's conversation, but Rona had forborne from commenting, fearful that an inadvertent remark might put her sister on the defensive. Lindsey, who'd reverted to her maiden name after her divorce from Hugh Cavendish, had had several disastrous liaisons over the past few years – due, as she freely admitted, to falling for unsuitable men – and Rona hardly dared hope that Steve might prove her salvation. Both sisters had met him before Christmas, when his father, Frank, who was a friend of their own father, had featured in Rona's previous series on life-changing experiences.

In the interim, their lives had been dominated by the weddings of both of their parents – their mother Avril's to Guy Lacey and their father Tom's to Catherine Bishop – and it was on the latter occasion, to which the Hathaways had been invited, that Rona had begun to suspect a growing interest between Steve and her sister.

'In fact,' Lindsey was continuing, 'we're all going out for a meal on Friday.'

'How do you know he's her ex?' Rona asked curiously. 'It seems an odd thing to come out at a first meeting, specially with his girlfriend there.'

'Steve told me later. He wondered if you knew her. I only mentioned it because presumably Nicole's now a single mother herself and might be of interest.'

'Now that's an idea! Thanks, sis!' Rona spun the magazine round, scanning the relevant pages.

'Only problem is,' Lindsey continued, 'she mightn't appreciate a feature on herself appearing in a mag she writes for.'

'True. As it happens, I'm seeing Barnie this evening. I'll sound him out.'

Finishing her coffee, Lindsey pushed back her chair. 'I must go, I've a client coming in at two.' She was a partner in Chase Mortimer, a firm of solicitors in Guild Street. 'Thanks for lunch.'

'Such as it was.' It had been a simple salad, hastily thrown together on her sister's arrival.

'Well, I did only drop in to borrow this book.'

Rona accompanied her up the stairs to the hall. 'What's he like, the ex?' she asked, opening the front door.

'We only met briefly, but he seemed OK. Bit of a hunk, actually.'

'You can fill me in at Mum's birthday do on Saturday. If I approach Nicole it might be helpful to have some background info.'

Returning to the kitchen, she sat down and pulled the open magazine towards her. Although, as Lindsey had guessed, she didn't normally read the cookery section, she was aware that Nicole Summers was regarded as an authority on matters culinary and it would be useful to have some idea of what she actually wrote about.

In fact, the scope of the feature surprised her. There was a review of a restaurant that had just opened in Woodbourne, a listing of the month's cookery programmes on television and a note of new ingredients now available in the shops, alongside a column headed 'The history of the food on your plate' which gave the country of origin of each item. There were also suggested menus for a week, and the illustrated recipes were so appetizingly described that even Rona felt a momentary impulse to try them.

Although she'd been a sporadic contributor to the magazine over the last few years, usually in the form of series on local interests, Rona considered herself a biographer by profession and had four highly acclaimed 'lives' to her credit. It was in fact only six months since she'd finished the last one, on the life of the artist Elspeth Wilding, and at the time she'd been more than glad to put it behind her. Her husband, Max, maintained that death and disaster seemed to follow whichever genre she worked in, but after the traumas of the last bio he'd gone so far as to advise her to write only about people who'd been safely dead and buried for a hundred years. Perhaps she should take his advice.

Max himself was an artist with a studio across town, a measure that became necessary when, early in their marriage, it had become evident they couldn't work in the same house – he needing loud music to inspire him and she requiring complete silence for her writing. Furthermore, to their family and friends' initial disquiet, he also slept there three nights a week following his evening art classes. Early morning was his preferred painting time, and this way he was able to make full use of the light without the need to rush back across town at daybreak, having returned home merely to sleep. The arrangement, though unorthodox, suited them both admirably and they spoke on the phone at least twice a day.

Rona closed the magazine and sighed. Over the last few weeks she'd become increasingly restless as she worked on the undemanding series and, eager now to begin looking for another life to research, she was anxious to bring it to a close. Nicole Summers would be an excellent example with which to finish.

She flipped open her laptop, googled her and was interested to see she had a web page and blog as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts. So at least she wasn't averse to publicity. Rona studied her photograph judiciously: brown hair curling on her shoulders, oval face with well-defined brows above dark eyes, and an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.

Thoughtfully she closed the laptop and loaded the lunch dishes into the dishwasher. As she'd told Lindsey, she would speak to Barnie and see what he advised.

Barnie and Dinah Trent lived in a sprawling bungalow on the north-eastern fringes of the town, a route increasingly familiar to Rona since not only was Lindsey's flat also off this road but so was the new home of their father and Catherine. She was still coming to terms with no longer being able to phone him on the spur of the moment to suggest lunch, as she frequently had both during his tenure at the bank and after his retirement, when he'd moved out of the family home in Belmont to a furnished flat in the centre of town. She missed those impromptu meetings.

She turned into Hollybush Lane and, as the five-bar gates were open, drove through them and pulled up in front of the house, closing the gates behind her before releasing her dog from the car. Despite this being home to three Siamese cats, Gus, her golden retriever, was a welcome visitor, a non-aggression pact having been agreed early in their acquaintance.

'Rona!' Dinah came hurrying to greet her, her rich, deep voice, as always, at odds with her diminutive...