Almost instantly had followed: Shit! Clancy, I am so fucking sorry. Msg wasn’t meant for you. I am so, so, so sorry you would find out like this. Renée and I are having a baby. I am so sorry.

She felt as if he’d picked her up and hurled her against a wall. Will was going to be a dad. With Renée. Kisses and smileys for Renée; so fucking sorry for Clancy.

Said it all really.

The walk back to the pub felt as if it took hours, not thirty minutes. Finally, they reached Aaron’s silver truck, standing out amongst all the cars in the car park, and got in.

Aaron said something about his niece Daisy loving the marshes. He held the ignition key as if he could start a conversation with it.

Clancy made an effort to reply, her tongue feeling as if it were some new device she had to gain control of. ‘I’m sure she does.’ She took a breath and turned to face him. ‘Sorry I went weird on you. The texts were from Will.’ Her throat felt so stiff and tight she was surprised the words could find a way through. She fumbled for her phone again and pulled up the texts so he could read them for himself.

His eyebrows shot up into his hair. ‘That was a shitty way for you to find out.’ He put a comforting hand on her leg.

Her voice, when it emerged, was husky. ‘It was unexpectedly emotional.’

Aaron gave a humourless laugh. ‘Traumatic, I should think. You found out about Will’s infidelity in a particularly horrible and humiliating way, he told you about his marriage in case it escaped onto Instagram, and now—’

‘I doubt if any of it was deliberate,’ she cut in.

He said nothing, his thumb circling on her leg.

She turned to look at him. His skin had the healthy colour of an outdoorsman, his shoulders and chest naturally sculpted and, she knew from having been pressed against them, firm. ‘You think he let me find out like this on purpose?’ Her voice squeaked on the last two words.

Aaron shrugged. ‘Or he’s incredibly careless.’

‘Will’s a nice guy.’ She put her hand over his where it lay on her thigh, because Aaron was a nice guy too and she was sorry about her shocked retreat into silence. They’d been having a lovely day till then.

‘Does a nice guy cheat?’ he murmured, as if to himself. ‘Get caught with his pants down? Mix up his ex-fiancée and new wife in the middle of a conversation about pregnancy?’

Clancy thought hard, watching cars pass on the road. She felt slightly sick, as if there was an oil slick in her stomach. ‘That day … he told me the relationship with Renée was like riding on the back of an enchanted dragon,’ she said. ‘Out of control but loving every moment. I said could he not have hopped off the dragon ride just long enough to tell me the wedding was off? He told me I wasn’t romantic. You’d think, under the circumstances, that that would be the least of my worries but I was surprisingly hurt. I’d thought our relationship enduring because it was well nurtured and mature.’