She nodded. ‘Harry was so sweet when he said goodbye last night. Got all mushy about me helping him and Rory out. The pair of them and Anabelle went to a Travelodge in Leicester while they find a house to rent. He’s got really conflicted feelings about his parents splitting up.’

‘I’ve talked to him on the phone. It’s a lot to cope with for him.’ Aaron glanced back at the apartment building on the corner. ‘So were you on the sofa?’ He didn’t justify the question or look embarrassed. He just asked.

‘Had to, really. The boys were in the spare room.’ She watched his eyes carefully and saw them flicker.

Then she decided to change the subject, taking him at his word that he was interested in her old stamping ground. ‘This is Prince of Wales Road, NW5. If you go down Crogsland Road to Haverstock Hill you’ll see the tube station. In more or less the opposite direction is Malden Road where we could find somewhere nice for lunch. Would you like to have a wander around first?’ It seemed very different to striding around the clifftops of Nelson’s Bar but he’d expressed an interest so she felt she ought to offer a tour.

‘That would be good.’ He took her hand and brushed a kiss on the back of it, then paid attention as she took him around the neighbourhood she’d once called home, raising his eyebrows to see so much living accommodation over shops.

As he didn’t look impressed, she joked, ‘Or you can live in a nine-bedroom house at the Belsize Park end if you have five million quid or so.’ He looked pained.

She showed him Talacre Park and the gardens, and he studied the benches full of people eating lunch in the sunshine. He kept glancing at the sky, she noticed, as if checking it was still there. She found herself trying to make up for his lack of enthusiasm, or perhaps her old choices in living here, by listing all the great advantages to living and working in London. He seemed to listen.

They ate lunch at a pavement café in Malden Road on wooden tables and benches similar to those outside the B&B. That was the only similarity. Here the traffic was a constant presence. They had to raise their voices over its noise and they could taste exhaust fumes along with their paninis.

He said suddenly, ‘You’re not sure about Nelson’s Bar, are you?’

‘My things are there,’ she said, unguardedly, but logically.

He put down the last of his panini. ‘Is that your only reason for going back?’ He was using his stolid, unemotional voice.

She paused to drink from her coffee mug, ultra-conscious that she actually yearned to return. Mainly because of him. And it might not be what he wanted to hear. OK, so she was intelligent enough to realise that him being here now, with her, out of his milieu, was because of her, but the memory of how hard he’d fought to keep his own space when he was with Genevieve was pin-sharp in her memory. What if, one day, Clancy too wanted more than Aaron was able to give?