It had taken every bit of dignity she possessed to leave that room without crying. And from that moment on, she had walled up her heart like a tomb. No entry. Access denied. It was too dangerous, too hurtful even to try, she had decided. Forget it!

She gripped the steering wheel now, driving west, thinking about the boundaries she’d erected around herself, mighty and impenetrable. Her own fortress, in which she had kept herself safe, protected from idiots like Andrew or Will. The strategy had worked, at least – nobody had been able to break in and hurt her again, but sometimes it had felt like a lonely hill on which to stake your principles. Even Paul . . .

Well. She felt kind of bad about Paul, if she was honest with herself. A colleague of hers at the school, he had been a real rock over the years: not only with the advice and encouragement he’d given her as a novice teacher, but also with numerous helpful deeds, coming to her rescue when her car wouldn’t start one snowy afternoon after school, popping round with a toolbox and new lock the horrible day she’d been broken into, and generally being on the end of the phone if she needed a pal. He was lovely, in short. Handsome too. As their friendship had developed, she had occasionally felt a funny sensation inside, a giddy, floaty sort of feeling, as if she might be falling for him, but she had stamped on it hard. Very hard. She had made a pact with herself always to put Amelia first, and that meant never getting involved with a man and becoming vulnerable to hurt again. So that had to be the end of it.

That said, there had been a couple of times when she had got the impression that Paul might be having similar feelings about her too, though, as if he would also like more to come of their friendship – an earnest look in his eye, a throat-clearing hesitancy as if he were building up to broach a tricky subject – but she had firmly pre-empted any such advances each time, making it clear that she only had room for Amelia in her life, before he could put her on the spot with an awkward question. Afterwards she had found herself cringing, feeling bad for the way his face had fallen, but she knew that refusing him was the right thing to do. Because how could she possibly get involved with anyone else?

She frowned, still unsure now whether or not she had done the right thing, then spotted the sign to the village and tried to concentrate on where she was going. It was only self-preservation, she told herself. Nothing wrong with that, was there?