‘I know.’ Holly felt her face start to burn. ‘Maybe it’s because, for some reason, he makes me feel as though I’m that nineteen-year-old kid again, but it just came out. And now we’ve both got to sit around the table on Sunday with Mum and Dad, and you and Harry, of course, and make polite conversation after he fell on top of me in his pants.’

‘Well, when you put it like that…’ Rachel collapsed into giggles back into the cushions of her sofa. ‘And he actually said yes?’

‘Yup,’ Holly groaned. ‘Do you think I should call him and cancel it?’

‘Wouldn’t be very polite of you,’ Rachel said reasonably. ‘And the fact that he’s agreed to it suggests he wants to come. Unless, of course, he looked too terrified to say no?’

‘It was after I’d given him a back massage, so he might not have been in his right mind,’ Holly sipped her wine and tried to quell the butterflies in her stomach. ‘Perhaps he’ll do us a favour and cry off when he’s come to his senses.’

‘Or perhaps you’ll have to suck it up and just make sure you ply him with enough booze round Mum and Dad’s dinner table that he forgets what a closet nerd you are!’

‘Thanks for the moral support, sis,’ Holly replied. ‘And remember, not a word about the photo-in-the-suitcase business, or you’ll be wearing the trifle rather than eating it.’

‘I’ll be the soul of discretion,’ Rachel said. ‘But don’t you think it’s about time you told him, just to get it out in the open?’

‘Probably,’ agreed Holly, ‘but it just seems so random. I mean, we’ve chatted a lot, but I still haven’t found the right time to mention it. It’s hardly like, when he’s on my massage table, I can just casually drop it into conversation, is it? “Oh, by the way, it seems like you clearly don’t remember one night fifteen years ago when we had a bit of a kiss and you held my hand.”’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Maybe I’m overthinking it.’

‘You think?’ Rachel rolled her eyes. ‘But I promise I won’t say anything. Better remind Mum not to, as well, though. You know what she’s like after a glass of wine!’

‘I threatened to burn the whole case if she said anything,’ Holly replied. ‘And I would, too.’

‘Fair enough.’ There was a pause as the two sisters sipped their wine. It had been a busy week for them both. Rachel had enrolled Harry into the local nursery school, and she was preparing herself for handing over his care to them for sixteen hours a week. ‘How did Harry get on at his orientation morning at nursery?’