‘You have to start getting used to the fact I want to know everything about you, Pax. I will never bore of hearing about you. As I keep telling you: talking helps.’

‘There’s really not that much to tell.’

He laughed softly. ‘You are breaking Steps One, Two and Three there, possibly Four, definitely Five; Six and Seven less so, quite probably Eight and Nine, you’re decimating Ten and Eleven, and as for Twelve…’ He puffed out his cheeks and grimaced. ‘Blown it.’

‘What is Twelve?’’

‘Let’s get to that after you tell me about being married to Mack.’

*

‘Darling, I have to get back to Kes,’ Ronnie told Blair, leaning from the kitchen into the breakfast room passage, just able to make out the glow of the screen.

‘Get rid of Austen.’ Blair was extremely suspicious of Bay.

‘I think he’s laying siege until Pax gets back. Either that or he wants to buy more land off me.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’ve heard rumours that his marriage is finally coming unstuck.’ Lester had turned into a positive goldmine of scurrilous tittle-tattle.

‘Definitely tell him to sling his hook in that case.’

‘While he’s here, I have him where I can see him. He’s the last thing Pax needs.’

She’d rarely confided much of home to Blair in the past, but now their strings had tightened through rapprochement, and she valued his advice. In the past week, their calls had been getting longer, often hours at a time. She’d happily live with him in her ear. His unguarded humour and blunt, matter-of-fact approach to relationships was her touchstone.

‘Ron, you’ve got to let her life happen. It’s not yours to put right. If she’s going to royally fuck it up, she’ll go ahead and do it.’

‘What if she’s even better at that bit than I was?’

‘You turned out all right in the end.’

‘You say the most romantic things.’

It was hard to tell if the interference on the line had worsened or his deep, gravelly voice was more emotional than usual. ‘We found each other, didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ she smiled, knowing they were both incredibly better for it.

*

‘Tell me about your relationship with alcohol?’ Luca guessed he might only have one crack at this before Pax clammed up and joked it off, too self-protective to see how much it would help her to share it.

‘You make it sound like we’ve dated, married, separated.’

‘Didn’t you? It was with you all the way, I’m guessing, starting when – fifteen, sixteen?’

‘Put like that… Yes, I got sloshed as a teenager like most of my friends; I just wasn’t as good at stopping as them.’

‘But you could stop?’

‘No choice. I had no money, especially after I left home.’

‘It was after you married you developed a problem?’

‘Yes, no. I mean, I was far more out of control before then. I was a disaster.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You really don’t want to know all that boring rubbish about me, do you?’ She looked round awkwardly.