‘Anyway, there’s a chair carved with a mermaid design in the church there – hundreds of years old, it is, and we went to see it. Perhaps your dad was caught up in the romance of the story, because that was where he asked me to marry him. Down on one knee and everything, once we were outside – he made a right spectacle of himself.’ Her mum straightened up, her face soft. She’d always enjoyed scolding her husband for one misdemeanour or another. No doubt at the moment of proposal she’d said, ‘Get off your knee, you daft chump, you’ll get grass stains!’ as if that was the most important consideration.

‘Maybe you could visit while you’re down there, anyway,’ she went on, folding a tea-towel. ‘Take some photographs of the place for me, so that I can see it again.’

‘I’m sure there are pictures online,’ Maggie said, posting a dishwasher tablet into its compartment and setting the machine running. ‘Do you want me to look on my phone for you?’

‘You could pay your respects while you were there,’ her mum went on, as if she hadn’t heard Maggie. ‘I’d go myself, but with my hip, I’m not so mobile these days. Go on, I would really appreciate it. And you never know, you might be overcome by romance and passion yourself.’ She’d nudged Maggie, who promptly scowled. ‘Just like that fortune cookie said, eh?’

‘What, prompted by an old chair?’ Maggie scoffed. Romance and passion had not been on her agenda since Will had walked out on her fourteen years earlier, but she allowed her mother’s remark to pass without further comment nevertheless. That said, she rather liked the thought of her young, handsome father dropping impulsively to one knee and proposing, to hell with any grass stains, so she elbowed her natural scepticism aside for once. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she promised.

Lorna was leafing through her scrapbook. Is that you? It’s me, Aidan said in her head as she turned the pages. There he was, in a newspaper clipping, aged eleven as he collected his chess trophy from the south-west finals, looking up through those long dark lashes of his with a shy smile.

There he was, suited and booted with Roy, in a photo from his baby cousin’s christening. Sixteen he must have been there, but already taller than Roy by a good inch. How he’d loved that! How he’d milked it too, resting an elbow on Roy’s shoulder with a big grin, as if he wasn’t the young whippersnapper!

There he was as a baby, with such round chubby cheeks you couldn’t help but chuck them between your thumb and forefinger. Those bonny black curls too. Had there been a more beautiful baby?