‘He was my replacement when I moved down here. And I’ve met your mum. She’s lovely. My fiancée and I had a bear from her when we got engaged – a Ju-Sea Bear I think it was called – and she made a Hawaiian shirt and a surfboard for him because we were surfers.’

‘Oh my God! I remember that bear! She was so chuffed with how he turned out. She sent me loads of photos of him. He was gorgeous. Wow! Small world.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’ I shook my head in disbelief.

‘I wonder why Tiff didn’t make the connection.’

‘I don’t think she knows where I’m from. It never came up. We’ve only had coffee a handful of times and it’s always been daft banter or work chat.’

‘So what made you and your fiancée move down to London? Not many places to surf round here.’

Oh shit! I’d walked into that one. No lies. No misunderstandings. I’d tell her straight out.

‘Bit of a story there,’ I started, wondering whether to blurt it out and be done with it or whether I should steer the conversation back to her mum because I’d spectacularly hijacked it away from the one thing she wanted to ask me about. Bollocks. I was such a chicken. I couldn’t seem to say the words. ‘How about we focus on your mum for now and, if you’re not sick of the sound of my voice by then, I’ll tell you how I ended up in London?’

‘I hope you don’t think I’m prying,’ she said, blushing slightly.

‘Not at all. I just don’t want to make the evening all about me when you wanted to ask me about your mum.’

Jemma smiled. ‘Thank you. I do want to talk about Mum, but I’m also interested in hearing all about a fellow Whitsborough Bay resident and how you ended up making the move to London like me. I’ll tell you my story too, if we’ve got time.’

‘It’s a deal. Right. Focus. From what you’ve told me about your mum, I suspect that–’

I jumped when ‘Ring Ring’ by Abba started playing.

Jemma groaned. ‘I’ll kill my little brother. He keeps changing the ring tone to songs that are phone-related. He thinks it’s hilarious.’ She delved into her bag. ‘Sorry. Might be Mum or Logan.’ She frowned as she looked at the screen and mouthed ‘Tiff’ to me.