As Clancy was definitely in no hurry to return to the Roundhouse, she offered to take Nelson for his evening run while Aaron visited his family. ‘Here’s a spare door key,’ Aaron said, taking it from the kitchen table. ‘I’ll try not to be too long. Maybe we can salvage something of our evening afterwards.’

Clancy took the proffered key. Aaron sounded as disappointed as she felt at the way the evening was panning out. She tried to rediscover some of the buzz she’d felt before Alice’s arrival. ‘Hope so!’ And, realising he hadn’t kissed her properly this evening, lifted her face to touch her lips to his.

Aaron reacted by clamping his arms around her, a hand on her upper back and one on her behind, pressing against her as his tongue caressed hers. The next few minutes passed much more agreeably than the last, though Nelson whined and nudged them with his nose as the kiss got deeper.

When they came up for air, Aaron’s usual smile was back in place. ‘That’s better.’ He repeated the kiss before finally quitting the house, turning the opposite way to her when they reached the garden gate.

She left the lane and meandered onto the clifftop, giving Nelson plenty of time to sniff, enjoying the summer evening, noticing a few green shoots and wildflowers nosing through the parched clifftop grass after the recent rain. The glorious deep north Norfolk sunset made everything look as if she were viewing it through a pink filter. The gulls that usually wheeled about the clifftops seemed to have taken the cerise and purple evening sky as the signal to retire to bed and Clancy could hear little but the breeze in her ears and the rasp of Nelson’s extending lead winding and unwinding. He glanced back at her from time to time, giving a gentle tail-wag as if to say, ‘Oh, you’re still there. Good!’

They made their way to the furthest point of the headland, Clancy turning her gaze to the sea and wondering how Aaron’s family was taking the Awful Alice news. Clancy would have been thrilled to see Alice again under other circumstances – like before she’d begun a new life in Nelson’s Bar herself – but Aaron had only spoken the truth when he’d declared that Alice’s arrival would be the cat amongst the pigeons. Pigeon Clancy had flown out of the Roundhouse pretty much as Cat Alice stalked in, swishing her plaits if not her tail.

How would Lee take seeing Alice again? She both was and wasn’t the Alice he’d fallen in love with. Her appearance was startlingly different … but not unattractive, especially in the kind of skimpy clothing she’d sported earlier, her beautiful, delicate tattoos twining sinuously up her arms and across her shoulders. Clancy could imagine new Alice knocking Lee’s socks off just as old Alice had.

Then Clancy was pulled back to the present – literally – as Nelson gave a great tug, trying to head for a figure strolling across the parched grass towards them. ‘Genevieve,’ Clancy called, letting Nelson tow her closer so he could perform his one-dog welcoming dance.