One such reward was close beside him at this moment, as the pair of them stood there alone on the empty, windswept beach, clasping hands, listening to the crash and boom of the waves breaking on the shore and watching the glimmering orange ball of the sun dip gradually over the sea.

Neither one of them spoke until the sun had finally vanished behind the horizon, the distant cloud banks like a mountain range glowing in a dramatic blaze of crimsons, golds and purples. Then the colour slowly faded, the spectacle died away and the chill of dusk began to set in.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and tenderly squeezed his hand. ‘Our last sunset,’ she said.

‘It didn’t have to be,’ he replied.

‘You know it did, Ben.’

Her name was Abbie Logan, and she’d been part of his life – pretty much his whole life in fact – for the last six weeks. They had met by chance in her native Australia, and then a romantic impulse (not something that often occurred in Ben’s daily existence) had prompted him to invite her to come back to France with him.

Half English, half Irish on his mother’s side, he had moved around a great deal in his past, both during and since his military days; but for some years now he’d been settled in a quiet corner of Normandy, a place called Le Val. Abbie had never been to Europe before, never known anywhere outside of the Northern Territory in which she’d been born and raised.

Their time together had been among the happiest that Ben could remember: showing her some of his favourite haunts, walking around the ancient woods and rolling green fields that surrounded Le Val, swimming in the sea, hiking in the hills, introducing Abbie to some of the local cuisine, and generally enjoying one another’s company to the utmost. They’d managed to compress six months’ worth of intense romance into as many weeks, and sometimes it had seemed to him that it could go on forever. But after a lot of heartfelt discussion, the two of them had come to the mutual acceptance that this couldn’t be the love of their lives. Abbie had her own life to return to, her own direction, her roots in her beloved Northern Territory and the responsibility of running the successful air charter business she’d inherited from her late father. As much as she’d treasured every moment of her time here with Ben and would never forget it, this just wasn’t her world. And so the time would soon be coming for them to part ways. One final night together, and she’d be leaving in the morning.