‘You could come to Mum’s with me for lunch,’ he suggested. ‘She never minds one more.’

‘No thanks,’ she said quickly. Then smiled apologetically. ‘This is going to sound so ungracious as you’ve been so kind, but I don’t want to go somewhere else I’m not wanted. Not today. I’d be awful company anyway. I’m going to go for a long walk and mutter to myself about the unfairness of life.’

‘OK.’ He’d feel much the same in her shoes. He busied himself with turning out the light and locking the workshop door. ‘If you want to stay here and use the Wi-Fi …?’

She screwed up her face. ‘Like to reply to Will? No thanks. Wouldn’t do to disturb the honeymoon.’ Then she managed a smile. ‘Thanks again. See you.’ Hands in pockets, she began to back off.

Aaron clicked his fingers to Nelson. ‘We’ll walk with you till I turn off.’

She shrugged, but hovered while he found Nelson’s lead and stopped him bouncing around with excitement long enough to clip it onto his collar. They walked together down Long Lane until they reached the turn to Frenchmen’s Way.

Aaron paused, but Clancy carried on walking. ‘Thanks again,’ she threw over her shoulder. Evidently, she wasn’t going to hang around long enough for him to re-invite her to lunch.

He watched her walking away, her chin at a defiant angle. If he hadn’t just witnessed the pain she’d gone through he would have thought that she was completely comfortable in her own skin.

Chapter Eleven

Almost a fortnight after the pizza night in Aaron’s garden, Clancy was still ordering herself, ‘Don’t think about Will and Renée’s wedding’ but it was like that game ‘Don’t think of an elephant’ when, of course, all you could then think about was an elephant.

An elephant would have been a relief. What had been floating before her eyes since she’d seen Mel’s Instagram account were the beaming faces of two people who hadn’t been able to wait to tie the knot. Will in an unfamiliar suit, Renée in an ivory silk dress, not quite a wedding dress but adequate when dressed up with flowers and an elaborate up-do.

It made Clancy remember her own wedding dress which was, presumably, still in Tracey’s spare room where she’d hung it so Will wouldn’t invoke bad luck by seeing it before the supposed big day. Cue hollow laughter.

The erstwhile plans for her emphatically-not-going-to-happen wedding taunted her. Cream bouquet and buttonholes, duck-egg cravats. Morning suits in pewter grey. Reception at the Gladstone Library in Whitehall Place …

Much better to think of elephants.

Two of the three holiday cottages were occupied just now, but the guests had gone off in their cars. She spent the morning mowing the lawns and was weeding the front patch at number four Roundhouse Row, deciding which were weeds and which were plants by drawing on her memories of helping Aunt Sally in her garden. She was enjoying the scent of damp earth, when Aaron’s cousin Jordy strolled up hailing her as if he’d known her for years. ‘Got a minute? I want to ask you something.’