I breathe out shakily, because it’s all coming back now and I know exactly what will happen next. I’m not sure how I could have forgotten it – the booze, I guess, or just the gradual erosion of the intervening years – but the memory is now crystal clear in my mind.

Right on cue, Daphne appears, peering gingerly into the hedge opposite. And without thinking, I do exactly what I did fifteen years ago: I reach up to bend one of the branches above me until it snaps cleanly in two.

She jumps at the sharp sound and turns in my direction, a smile playing on her lips.

It wasn’t random chance at all.

I wanted her to find me. I made her find me.

She gets nearer and nearer until she’s standing right over me, grinning down through the leaves.

‘So,’ she whispers. ‘Not a great hitman, not a great hider.’

I just about manage to croak a laugh.

‘Is there any room in there?’

I lift the biggest branch and she climbs under it and sits down opposite me, cross-legged. Our knees are already overlapping, but then she has to lean forward to readjust her position, which brings our faces so close they are practically touching.

‘Oops,’ she whispers. ‘This is a bit, erm …’

She lets the sentence hang there, unfinished, as we look into each other’s eyes. My heart is thumping so hard that I’m sure she must be able to hear it. But I can’t help it. My head is suddenly filled with the memory of this moment, fifteen years ago: our first kiss. How right it felt, as I leaned forward and touched her lips to mine. The way she smelled, the way she felt, the way she tasted.

She tucks a stray curl back behind her ear and smiles at me. And God, I want to kiss her again.

She tilts her head slightly, and without thinking, I reach up and touch her face, very gently. She smiles again, and the tip of her nose brushes my cheek as her lips find mine. And as we kiss, everything around me seems to fizzle and dissolve, until there’s only the two of us left.

Chapter Eleven

I’m not sure how long we stay like that, lost in that kiss.

I must have kissed Daphne a million times over the past fifteen years, but I can’t remember any of them feeling this perfect. It’s like my whole body is being lit up from inside. I don’t want it to ever end.

But then, suddenly, it does.

There’s a sharp crackle of leaves, the branches are pulled back, and there’s Alice, staring straight down at us.