I did. And I also told him that it was the first time I’d ever shared and explained my past. I told him at quite some length. How it had happened. The images I remembered from that night. An old woman, running in her apron from a cottage in the lane, her hand over her mouth: stopping dead, then turning back to phone the police. The way Liam had slid, eventually, off the car bonnet on to the road. How I’d once walked past his mother in town: how we’d both stiffened with recognition. I’d seen a photo of her in the local paper, at the funeral, and of course, she’d made it her business to know who I was, even though she’d never met me. My parents had insisted on going alone to the coroner’s court. I told him how a boy in a leather jacket had deliberately knocked into me in a local pub. Spilled the drinks I’d been carrying. A friend of Liam’s, I later learned. How moments like those had set me back, sent me reeling. There were many terrible moments, a lifetime of them, which is different, naturally, to a terrible lifetime. I told him how I’d been incapable of talking about my feelings, even though my family had tried, principally because I felt there was no script for a tragedy like this. How I knew my life had changed immeasurably. How I used to think of Liam every single day, and had imagined that would persist forever. And how, to my shame, it had begun to stop. Was more intermittent. When I’d finished, Michael was silent.

I’d been lying on my back, but I rolled over and lay in the crook of his arm. We were silent for a while, and I could tell he was thoughtful. I asked him about his parents, then. He turned and looked at the bedside clock. It was two in the morning.

‘Another time, little Luce,’ he said, giving me a squeeze. ‘I’ll tell you about it another time.’

He didn’t, though. And in a small part of my head, I realized I’d given him something very precious. Something very intimate. A part of myself, if you like. And he hadn’t reciprocated. And he never did.

5

The first time Michael surprised me was on a plane going out to Majorca. He wasn’t on the plane, but a stewardess came down the aisle bearing a bunch of flowers. She stopped beside me. Then she checked my seat number and handed them to me. They were from Michael. I flushed with delight.

‘Oh my God!’ My girlfriends got up out of their seats and crowded around. ‘You’ve got flowers! How did he do that? Oh my God, he is so gorgeous. Luce, you are so so lucky!’