Rachel squealed, then, remembering that Harry had only just got off to sleep, clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Well, it’s about time.’ She gave Holly a playful nudge on the arm. ‘Let me make this tea and you can tell me all about it.’

Holly found herself giggling again. ‘What are we, fifteen? Do I have to give you all the gory details?’

‘Absolutely,’ Rachel said firmly. ‘It’s just a shame I dragged you away from him before things got really interesting.’

Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I was right about one thing,’ she said. ‘He can kiss like no one I’ve ever kissed before. Makes me kind of wish I’d been braver back when we’d first met.’ She sighed. ‘Who knows what might have happened.’

‘Oh, come on!’ Rachel said. ‘You were so flipping square back then; you’d have been terrified if he’d put any moves on you. Probably best nothing more serious than kissing happened.’

She passed Holly her mug of tea and they wandered through to the living room, which was still scattered with Harry’s favourite toys. What a contrast, Holly thought, to the nursery medical cabinet upstairs with its wide variety of suspensions, nebulisers and medicines that Harry was, even at age three, so proficient at taking. The little red tractor and its toy farmer that Holly had bought him for his third birthday took pride of place in the middle of the living room floor and Holly stepped around it carefully.

‘I wasn’t that much of a nerd,’ Holly insisted, but she knew that Rachel was probably right. All the years she’d spent studying English Literature at university, all the passionate poems, plays and novels she’d read, and it wasn’t until quite a while later she’d let herself feel the heat she’d spent so much time reading about.

‘You totally were,’ Rachel settled herself on the sofa. ‘But that’s ancient history. What did he say, once he twigged that the sexy owner of the local well-being shop was that girl from all those years ago? Did he remember you?’

Holly drew a deep breath. ‘Well, he reckons he does,’ she said. ‘Although I did rather ambush him in the end with the music, and then the photos, so he probably thinks I’m some madwoman, too.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Perhaps it was a bit of overkill really. What if he thinks I’ve been holding out for him all this time and I’m some kind of weird stalker?’ Suddenly, dashing away from Charlie before they’d had a chance to talk seemed like a really daft idea. It was like London all over again. Back then, they’d only had a few hours, and afterwards they’d never seen each other again. What if they were destined never to really connect? To be ships that just passed in the night?