Paul was such a good person, with his shy smile and brown eyes, his habit of taking off his glasses and rumpling his thick sandy hair with the palm of his hand whenever he was thinking deeply. Seeing his handsome, smiling face across the staffroom always made her feel better: thank goodness, there he is, that person who understands me. And yet each time he had ever dared approach her about pushing their relationship to a different level, she had slammed down the shutters and backed away.

What are you so scared of, Maggie? It was a good question.

An image came to her of the pebble she’d thrown into the sea that morning, a slow-motion film running through her head of it tracing an arc across the forget-me-not-blue sky. The splash as it vanished beneath the surface. Would her chalked letters still be visible on the pebble or would the sea already have taken them away, washed the stone clean?

She reached down to find the other pebble at the bottom of her handbag and pulled it out. COURAGE, it said to her as she put it in the middle of the table. She bit the corner off her flapjack and chewed thoughtfully, then rummaged in her bag a second time and pulled out her phone.

Hi! Having a great time at Trebah today – thanks for the tip! She typed in a new message to Paul. The guidebooks are coming in v handy – much appreciated. Hope you’re having a lovely summer. Maggie.

She scrolled through the photos she’d taken that day, eventually settling on her favourite, which had been taken at the top of a downward path towards the water garden. From there you could see umpteen palms and cordylines, which looked fabulous silhouetted against the sky. Even by her own cack-handed photography standards, it was a good shot.

Attaching it to the text, she pressed Send. There. Okay, to a normal person, it wasn’t particularly courageous or daring, but Maggie had never been the one to start a conversation with Paul, she realized now. Never initiated anything with him, preferring to wait and let him call all the shots. It was a tiny thing, but she didn’t want to be the one who always reacted any longer.