‘I think you’ve said all you need to say, and you’re obviously not going to listen to me. Goodnight, Charlie.’

She picked up her evening bag from the footwell of the car and was out of the passenger door before he could respond further. Slamming the car door behind her, she felt his eyes on her back, until, evidently exasperated, he started the engine of his BMW and drove off.

As she walked up the path to her door, she felt at once deflated and angry. She couldn’t wait to get out of the dress, and although she’d entertained notions of Charlie being the one to unzip it, she was too cross now to fantasise. She’d known this dinner was a bad idea from the start, and it had shown her quite clearly that she and Charlie would never see eye to eye, no matter how sexy she found him.

Thrusting open her heavy wooden front door, she did her best to slam it behind her, to let out some of the irritation, nearly decapitating Arthur in the process, who was attempting to sneak in and find a warm place to sleep.

‘Sorry, my lovely,’ Holly said, picking him up and cuddling him to her. ‘Looks like you’ll be the only male sharing my bed tonight, and for a while yet.’

Slinging her bag down on the hall table and stepping out of her deeply vertiginous heels, she wandered off to bed.

Charlie, still seething, reached his house and drove swiftly into the parking space outside it. Pulling the key from the ignition, he slammed his car door shut and hurried up the path to his front door. He was twitching with irritation, laced with a deeper desire for Holly that, even though they’d parted acrimoniously, still throbbed inside him.

How could she have been so tactless? Honestly, the woman was like an unexploded bomb at times. A smaller voice whispered that he’d been an idiot to have put her in that position in the first place – after all, he knew how far apart they were ideologically, but he’d just assumed that she’d suck up her principles for his sake. That was clearly his first mistake; he had no right to assume anything of her. Why should she have to stay silent just because airing her opinion might make his life tricky? That was not the right way to conduct any relationship.

Pushing open his front door, he pulled out his phone in the lame expectation that in the two minutes it had taken him to drive from her place to his, Holly might have texted him. Even though he knew she wouldn’t have, it still struck him in the gut when that was confirmed by a distinct lack of messages.