They’d compromised eventually on her renting the cottage. At least they were in the same village, Peter had said in his candied voice, twisting her red curls round his fingers, which meant so much more variety. Two bedrooms … two beds …

‘Of course, I can’t ask you to pay much rent,’ Diana James-Jordan had gushed on their first meeting. ‘It’s practically derelict, and I’m certainly not going to throw money away on renovations. I used to put my lads in there, but,’ and she’d actually shuddered, ‘they’ve all got notions of bungalows with central heating and double glazing and built-in kitchen …’ She’d paused, hoping to elicit some sort of sympathy vote from Maddy over the inflated dreams of the lower classes. Not receiving one, she’d charged on. ‘So, if you want to do it up a bit, my dear, that’s entirely up to you. I’ll charge the merest peppercorn for it. You are working, I take it?’

Maddy had said well not exactly yet, but she had some interviews in offices in Reading and Newbury coming up, and her savings would certainly pay Diana’s rent in the meantime.

‘Oh!’ Diana had arched exquisite eyebrows. ‘I understood you were with Mr Knightley – Peter – in his venture. Is that not the case?’

Maddy had said no, it definitely wasn’t the case. Mr Knightley – Peter – and she had been together for some time, but she wasn’t in any way involved in his health studios. And then she’d signed a lease to be renewed every twelve months, and parted with her cheque, and the cottage had become her home.

She lifted the lid on the bulging rubbish bin, reminding herself to empty it that evening, and screamed.

There was a dead person under the boiler.

A pair of legs, tightly clad in faded jeans, tapered into large feet encased in disreputable desert boots. The rest of the body was out of sight beneath the boiler’s innards, but not for long. With a curse, a noise that sounded like skull on metal, and a further, far more colourful oath, the body, much to Maddy’s relief, began to wriggle.

Why a strange man should be tinkering with her boiler was not the thought uppermost in Maddy’s mind. She was riveted by the sight of a strong, well-muscled, and healthily suntanned torso appearing slowing across the none-too-clean floor of the scullery. Drew Fitzgerald emerged, tugging his sweater down over the fleetingly revealed body, and frowning.

‘Heavens!’ Maddy was stunned. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

Drew sat up, rubbing his head and examining his fingers for traces of blood. ‘Why did you scream? I could have knocked myself out.’

‘Sorry. I thought you were dead. Well, I mean, I could only see your legs and I thought that –’

‘That I’d been the victim of a hit-and-run heating system?’

He pulled himself to his feet, brushing his hair from his eyes. He looked much younger and more tousled than last night, Maddy thought. And angry.