Lucas is lying asleep in the bed beside me, unaware of the drama I’m concocting in my head. Does Faye know something about the body? She must have seen Huntley Lodge on the news and I guess in her field it would be easy to find out a bit about it. Maybe she knows how long the body has been there. Or maybe she knows nothing and is ringing to see if I’ve heard anything. But what does it all mean if she was buried at Huntley Lodge when we lived there? Will the cops think one of us is involved? Will they want to talk to us?

I feel like I’m cheating, not telling Lucas how worried I am. He’s always so open about his feelings. Sharing all his inner thoughts. If something is bothering him at work, I know about it. As soon as he knew how he felt about me he couldn’t wait to tell me.

‘I love you.’ He blurted it out over dinner one night in a Chinese restaurant. I was licking sauce from around my lips after finishing off a plate of sticky ribs and doubt I was at my most appealing.

‘What?’ I said, grabbing my glass of wine and pouring the remaining contents down my throat. I’m sorry now that I didn’t say, ‘I love you too’. But I hadn’t really thought about it and was not prepared to dive into another possible river of heartbreak. As far as I was concerned, Lucas was just another fling. He’d be going home to Australia and I wasn’t prepared to suffer the hurt of someone I loved leaving again. But, before long, it became apparent to me that there was something more to our relationship, something I couldn’t put my finger on. After a few months, I could feel Lucas slowly breaking down the barrier I had built to protect myself from getting too attached. Could it be love? Eventually, I surrendered to my feelings.

I could see that Lucas did love me. I had to stop paddling in the shallow end or get out of the pool. So I told him. Not over dinner in a busy restaurant but lying on his sofa one night. Just quietly, no big fuss. I leaned in to the warmth of his face and whispered in his ear. ‘I love you too’.

After that, things quickly moved into the next phase and within a week I was saying goodbye to Dad and moving in with Lucas.