Then they’d end up wrapped around each other, their respective projects ignored.

Clancy got a splinter in her buttock from sex on his workbench. It was worth it. When they were alone, everything was fun and/or hot, they laughed and loved together. His cottage became the haven that the Roundhouse had initially been to Clancy.

But even inside Aaron’s four walls, real life began to intrude.

‘Mum and Dad have invited us to go out to lunch with them,’ Aaron said after taking a phone call one Sunday in mid-August.

As sunshine had returned to the north Norfolk coast that very morning, Clancy had gone outside to watch the sea and give him privacy during the call. Now she felt guilty that her stomach shrank at the thought of being included in a family outing. ‘Both of us?’ she asked extra-brightly so he wouldn’t be able to read her misgivings.

‘That’s right.’ He slid his arm around her and cosied up to nibble at her neck. It hadn’t taken him long to work out that she was one large nerve-trembling erogenous zone from tips of her ears to the crook of her neck. ‘I think we could view it as an olive branch.’

His casual manner didn’t fool Clancy, though she would have loved to concentrate on what he was doing with his mouth rather than decoding the thread of tension in his voice. ‘Then we should certainly accept.’ Her voice became brighter still.

He stopped nibbling and stroked her cheek with a fingertip instead. ‘It’ll be fine. You all got on together before the wedding-that-never-was. If my family has been touchy with your family since then, I apologise on behalf of us all. But if you all avoid each other it leaves me in a tricky spot.’

She touched her lips to his hand, instantly wanting to ease him out of said tricky spot. ‘I’ll go back to the Roundhouse and shower and change.’ She’d taken extreme care not to try and move any of her possessions into Aaron’s cottage. It was his space. He’d been clear enough to Genevieve about that and Clancy was all too aware how it felt to have the possessions of others thrust upon you.

As it turned out, the Sunday lunch experience wasn’t too bad. Clancy picked Aaron up in her bright blue BMW and they met Fergus and Yvonne in a pub garden in Old Hunstanton. If Fergus and Aaron were the ones to keep the early conversation going, Yvonne and Clancy did relax a little after a while and join in.

They talked about Aaron’s work, then Yvonne contributed some funny things Daisy had said and Fergus recounted a story about a stag do at the hotel where he worked. The groom’s surname was Smurfit so his mates had painted him blue. Clancy told them about the website she was making for the village, then Yvonne wondered aloud whether Lee would buy his own place in the village when his money came through from his house in Northamptonshire.