I paused again, leaning on the railings. A young lad of about ten or so was writing with a sparkler while a girl of a similar age bounced up and down impatiently waiting for a woman in a bobble hat to light her a sparkler too. The second sparkler burst into life and they all squealed. The face of the woman in the bobble hat was momentarily lit up before she handed over the sparkler and my very own set of fireworks burst into life in my stomach. Jemma. She lit another sparkler and passed it to a woman who I assumed had to be her mum.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Jemma as she patiently lit sparkler after sparkler. When they were all spent, she chased the squealing girl and boy in circles across the sand, laughing as she repeatedly failed to tag them. Her mum laughed too although she didn’t join in.

The game stopped and I heard groans from the kids, presumably because they’d been told it was time to go home. Jemma linked her arm with her mum and began walking up the sand towards me. Not wanting to make things awkward, I moved further along the railings so she wouldn’t see me, but I could still see her.

She hugged her mum and each of the kids then watched as they headed along the seafront towards a row of parked cars. Jemma dug out her phone. Moments later a text came through:

✉︎ From Jemma

They’ve gone. Where are you? X

✉︎ To Jemma

Take ten steps forward x

I watched her as she looked at her phone, then snapped her head up in surprise. The grin she gave when she spotted me set those fireworks off again.

A voice in my head kept saying: It’s not even been a year yet. How could you do this? But I knew that was my own guilt speaking. I knew exactly what Nikki would say about this scenario because we’d actually discussed it. One of the doctors at work had lost his wife after a short battle with cancer and, within four months, he was seeing someone else. A year later, they were married. Nikki came home fuming one evening because several of her colleagues had made cruel suggestions that he obviously hadn’t loved his wife if he could move on so fast, or that he must have already been seeing the new girlfriend while his wife was dying.