I nodded and smiled, dashed away the surprise tears, then turned to meet my next partner.

Maybe half an hour later, the weekend came to a close and our last instruction was to remain ‘non-verbal’ until we were off the property.

Upstairs, in the dormitory, as I threw my few possessions into my bag, my heart was lighter than it had been in a long time. The peace of meditation still eluded me—it probably always would—but, entirely unexpectedly, I felt absolved. It didn’t make sense but that man, that stranger, had cleared away some of the wreckage of my past.

One of the Lentil Boys returned my electronics then I stepped out into the chilly evening—and saw the man standing there, pretending to fiddle with his phone.

This felt awkward. Something good had taken place in that room and that room was probably where it should stay.

After a quick nod, I made for my car, slightly startled by the long, low, cream-coloured Merc in the space beside mine. It looked as if it had come direct from a seventies’ police show, very at home screeching through narrow streets and doing handbrake turns. It was hard to know if it was beautiful or just flashy.

‘Hey,’ I heard. I turned.

‘I’m Quin.’

Well, he sounded sure of himself. And he’d broken the rules.

Then I decided that it didn’t matter. ‘I’m Rachel.’

He walked up to me. ‘Could I… ?’ he asked. ‘Could we . . . ?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not looking for, you know, that sort of…’

‘I don’t think I am, either,’ he said. (A lie, as it turned out.) ‘But whatever happened in there, it touched me, and it helped you?’

Even though less than an hour earlier I’d stared into his eyes for ten unbroken minutes, this was the first time I paid attention to the bigger picture. His brown hair was shorn tight and he was taller than me (I was five foot nine, this wasn’t always a given). On closer examination, his hiking boots, his technical-looking top, the way his skin was pulled tight over his cheekbones were characteristic of those men who did lots of gruelling physical challenges. Men who always had three protein bars on their person and whose physical make-up was 0 per cent body fat, 87 per cent sinew, 13 per cent rage.

He didn’t look like he belonged here. ‘Can I ask something?’ I surprised myself by saying. ‘Why did you do this weekend?’

‘Because…I never feel like I’m done.’

I waited.

‘I want something,’ he said. ‘Then I get it. Then I want a better version of it. Or I don’t want it any more.’

Oh my God, one of those men.

‘My happiness is always over there, just out of reach,’ he said. ‘Mr Upgrade, that’s me.’

I actually laughed. ‘Well, no one can say you didn’t warn me.’