‘OK. I’ll come up now.’

While he waited for her, he made coffee in his filter jug. He couldn’t usually be bothered but she’d asked for filter coffee at the Honeybee Café yesterday at lunchtime. By the time he’d grabbed milk and sugar and carried it out to set on the table with her iPhone, Nelson was doing his greeting dance in front of Clancy, who’d paused just inside the garden to fuss him.

Make-up free this morning, her face was pale and freckles danced across the bridge of her nose. She was wearing shorts; not the buttock-grazing kind but short enough to draw Aaron’s gaze.

‘Coffee?’ he offered, indicating the pot.

‘Thanks.’ As soon as she’d created her preferred concoction with milk and a half-spoon of sugar she picked up her phone from the table.

Aaron trained his gaze on the sea, blue and sparkling. ‘Feel free to go off somewhere to check your messages. You’ll get connectivity anywhere in the house and garden.’

‘It’s bad enough that I might want to be alone to read it, is it?’ But she came to sit beside him on the garden bench, parking the coffee mug beside her. Her hair blew against his skin and it felt like being stroked with feathers.

He knew she was about to be hurt and he couldn’t do anything about it. He revised his earlier reluctance to tell her what he knew. ‘If you want, I can tell you the little bit I accidentally read.’

‘No, I’ll …’ She dropped her gaze to her phone, regarding it as she might a venomous snake. Then she tapped and swiped at the screen, paused, and sat for several moments with her head bowed. ‘So you read that Will has married Renée,’ she said, her voice high and brittle.

He nodded, feeling almost sick on her behalf as she absorbed the blow. He hadn’t felt this bad for another person since Alice left Lee waiting for her in church.

Nelson came up and propped his big shaggy head on Clancy’s lap as if sensing she needed comfort.

Clancy stroked him behind the ears. Nelson’s eye half-closed in pleasure. ‘It was an impulse, apparently. Neither of them wanted to wait. He thought he’d better tell me. Didn’t want me to find out by seeing it on his sister Mel’s Instagram account.’

‘Shit.’ He winced. ‘I suppose he had to tell you but … well, shit.’

‘I certainly cut up rough when he kept me in the dark about accidentally falling in love with Renée so I suppose I can’t complain about him coming clean now.’ It was difficult to tell whether the noise she made was a giggle or a sob. ‘I think it would be a good idea if I checked out Mel’s Instagram and saw the wedding photos. Get all the pain over with at once. Would you mind if I sat here with you and did it? I feel a bit like a dog frightened by a storm.’ As if to demonstrate how that felt, Nelson whined.