She did as he suggested and felt better for it.

Once she’d washed and dried her hair, she changed into a pair of fresh shorts and a T-shirt from her suitcase.

By the time she joined him in the kitchen, her head had stopped throbbing.

“Something smells good.”

She noticed that the ends of his hair were still damp, so presumably he’d taken a quick shower too.

“Bacon, scrambled eggs, mushrooms. When we’ve eaten this, we can turn to strong coffee.” He served it onto plates and put them on the table next to two glasses filled with juice. “I squeezed a couple of oranges so that you have vitamin C.”

She took a mouthful of eggs and discovered she was hungrier than she’d thought, so she took another mouthful and then another and then put her fork down.

He raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s delicious, but as I told you before, I can’t put on weight in my job. It’s just how it is.”

“I get that, but from what you were saying last night you don’t actually have a job at the moment, so maybe this is a good time to eat.” He nudged the plate closer to her. “If you don’t eat, you’ll offend me.”

She picked up her fork again. “So, you’re saying that it’s fine if I ruin your shirt and deprive you of sleep, but if I don’t eat your bacon, then our friendship is over?”

“That sounds about right. And talking of friendship, I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. About Milly and Richard and what happened.”

“A grisly story, don’t you think?”

“It’s a pretty sad story. But I think that in all the emotional upset, you’re losing sight of the most important factor.”

“Which is?”

“That the person in the wrong here is Richard.”

It was true that she’d virtually wiped Richard from her thoughts. Her head was filled with Milly and the words she’d spoken. “I was in the wrong too because I wasn’t there for Milly.” It was painful to think about it. She so badly wanted to put the clock back and make different decisions. “I felt so bad about what I’d overheard and what I’d said to him. I was scared of what it would do to our friendship if I told her what had happened, and I just didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. I wasn’t there for her.”

“You’re so hard on yourself. You were put in a horrible position.”

“Yes.” She could admit that now. She could also admit that she’d been a coward. “But I should have been there for her. The crazy thing is that I was afraid to tell her the truth in case it ruined our friendship, but I managed to ruin it anyway.”

“I doubt that.”