I ignore this question and instead vent the thought that’s been gnawing at me all day. ‘This isn’t it, is it? This isn’t really where I end up?’

The old man shrugs. ‘Why not? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? That night in the pub, the night I met you, this was exactly where you were heading. You’ve just arrived a little earlier than expected, that’s all.’

I stop dead and stare at him. Any trace of hope I felt is starting to disappear with the fading sunlight. ‘So you’re telling me this is the final stop?’ I say breathlessly.

‘Your life is the decisions you make,’ the watch-seller says with his trademark infuriating vagueness. ‘Those decisions have led you here.’

It doesn’t compute somehow. My brain won’t let it. ‘But … I can’t be stuck here!’ I’m shouting now. People are starting to stare. ‘There has to be a way back!’

The old man tugs at his beard thoughtfully. ‘But do you want a way back? You know as well as I do what you were thinking on Christmas Eve 2020: that you’d made all the wrong choices, taken the wrong path. Perhaps this is the right one.’

‘This is not the right path!’ I yell.

‘How do you know?’ He looks genuinely curious as he asks this, his blue eyes narrowed, his shaggy head tilted.

I feel the desperation boiling up inside me. ‘Because I’m not in love with Alice! I’m in love with Daphne! She’s …’ My throat tightens and I find I can’t shout any more. ‘She’s my home,’ I say quietly. ‘I have to get back to her. I just have to. If I could only see her, talk to her, just for a minute …’ My eyes are stinging now, and I rub a hand across them. ‘I just … I just want to find out what happened. I want to find out if she’s OK.’

The old man takes this in silently as the Schnauzer comes trotting back over with the red ball.

He reaches down to pet the dog.

‘OK,’ he says softly. And then he glances at something – or someone – behind me.

I turn to follow his gaze, and the whole world starts to blur at the edges.

Chapter Forty-Five

Daphne is not alone.

That’s the first thing I notice. There’s someone sitting beside her on the bench on the other side of the park.

He’s too far away for me to see him clearly, but I know instantly who he is, and suddenly the identity of that sun-hatted man in her profile picture seems agonisingly, gut-wrenchingly obvious.