Aaron began to rise. ‘The tourism site rang yesterday, all enthusiastic about our rewritten blurb for the cottages. Presumably that’s your doing?’

Clancy grinned. ‘Evelyn left the sign-in details so I bigged up the cottages for get-away-from-it-all breaks, free from the tyranny of the mobile phone and the internet. People feel too available these days. Colleagues not being able to get them on email, text, WhatsApp or direct messaging could sound like bliss.’

‘Very smart,’ Aaron agreed, then went into the B&B to pay for breakfast, calling, ‘Hello!’ to Genevieve and the man she was now holding hands with across the table, while Clancy set off for the Roundhouse, glad for Genevieve if she’d managed to move on.

After a shower to rinse out her grazes, though they stung like crazy, she’d just enough time to dry her hair and choose a summer dress long enough to cover her grazed knee, a lacy cardigan that would hide her grazed elbow and sandals that didn’t press on her grazed toes. Light make-up, and she was ready when Aaron turned up in his truck.

His gaze glowed when he looked at her and Clancy was taken by surprise by a little spurt of heat.

When Aaron saw Clancy in a pale blue denim dress embroidered with poppies and daisies he was glad he’d changed into grey cotton trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt from what he termed ‘the trendy shop’ he frequented in King’s Lynn.

At the truck, he tried to be smooth, opening the passenger door for her, only for her to burst out laughing when Nelson jumped from the back seat into the front and Aaron had to do some undignified tugging on the big dog’s collar to persuade him back into the rear. Her smile burned itself into the back of Aaron’s eyes when she murmured, ‘Thanks,’ and swung gracefully in.

Soon they were bowling along the A149 east through Titchwell then Brancaster, chalk or flint cottages edging the road. Clancy didn’t seem to mind Nelson’s hot breath down her neck as they threaded their way between hedgerows and through villages of chalkstone cottages. The road was busy, as befitted a sunny Sunday as tourist season began to build, but Aaron was in no hurry. Clancy’s scent kept washing over him. He loved the way women smelled with their layers of scents, from shower gel to deodorant to moisturiser to make-up, and then possibly perfume on top. Clancy’s fragrance today reminded him of the wild yellow genistra that edged the drive of Keelmarsh House.

She appeared relaxed, her hands clasped lightly in her lap. ‘I had a visit from your cousin Jordy,’ she said, stretching her bare legs out, the angry red graze on her knee just peeping at him from under the hem.

He shifted his gaze from her legs to the road. ‘What did he want?’ Jordy was a bit of a lad. His relationship with his wife was up and down and if he was about to start playing the field Aaron wasn’t keen on the idea of Clancy being in the field Jordy played in.