I shuddered. ‘Harvey would have to do a lot more than grow up for me to want him back in my life. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since before I started here. And I don’t want to either.’

I posted the last mouthful of flapjack in and chewed resolutely.

Clare frowned. ‘Knowing how easy-going you are, he must have really done a number on you.’ I nodded and she rolled her eyes. ‘Listen to me, I’m doing it again, poking my nose in.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, laughing softly. ‘I don’t mind talking about him. We met online and I fell for him completely; I really thought Harvey was the one and we moved down to London to start a new life together. We were ecstatically happy for a while and then gradually he started to change; bit by bit he became very controlling and jealous. By the time I realized I ought to leave him, he’d even begun to get aggressive. I don’t know how I got him so wrong.’

‘I hope you’re not blaming yourself,’ she said indignantly, offering me another flapjack. I shook my head. ‘And you’re right, being on your own is far better than being unhappy.’

‘I must be a bad judge of character.’ I sighed, wondering how I’d let Harvey manipulate me for so long.

‘Oh, they’re not all the same; you can’t tar them all with the same brush.’

‘I suppose not,’ I said wistfully.

I thought about how decent Jensen had been to me, how supportive. He’d taken me to hospital twice already and I’d only known him for three months. Still there was no use getting my hopes up there, not if he was planning a move to Cape Town. Unless, of course, he asked me to go with him. They had loads of vineyards there, didn’t they? Maybe I could get a job and carry on learning about viticulture. Except, I snapped myself out of my daydream, I’d have a baby in a few months. I kept forgetting that. I’d be busy getting it weighed and going to baby percussion classes or whatever people did with a new-born …

‘If I’d thought like that,’ Clare continued, picking up her crochet needle and focusing on the square of wool on her lap, ‘I’d never have allowed myself to fall in love with Ian and get married again. Sometimes we don’t get our happy-ever-after first time around, you know.’

‘Ian’s your second husband?’

She nodded. ‘I’d been married for two years – happily married, so I thought – when I found out my first husband, Pete, was running a brothel. A brothel!’ Her eyes widened. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Gosh, even Harvey wasn’t doing anything that dodgy,’ I said, sipping from my water bottle.