I often wished that I could discard my unwelcome independence and be mothered again, especially by Viv, but it stubbornly remained a part of me. In the Scentsation days and until I went to Grasse it stood me in good stead. I never trusted Ted again, not really in the recesses of myself, although I wanted to and tried to, and although I loved him, in my way. I was quick to place my trust elsewhere, as soon as I thought I was grown up. I gave it to Tony, then I made the mistake of falling violently in love with someone else. My family, Jack and Lola, suffered from the mistakes I had vowed never to make.

‘That’s it, really. That’s all that happened,’ I concluded. But I turned my face against Paul’s shoulder and he held me to him.

‘I see,’ he said.

‘What?’ I asked, not making the connection. Or not admitting it.

‘I understand now why you’re so upset about Jack.’

‘It’s quite different,’ I protested.

‘Yes, of course,’ Paul gently agreed.

The nightmare’s miasma had receded and my limbs were beginning to feel heavy. I closed my eyes experimentally, then found it was difficult to open them again.

‘But it touches quite a lot of chords, doesn’t it? Jack running away from home and locking himself in a place where you can’t reach him?’

‘I don’t know how to deal with it. I love him so much, he must know that, but I don’t know how to get to him.’

‘We’ll find a way,’ Paul said.

I adored that we. I hadn’t heard it like this, spoken in the vulnerable small hours by a man I trusted, since Stanley left.

On the Sunday morning, it was my turn to make the coffee and toast. Paul’s eyes rested on me as I trod the overfamiliar route between toaster and kettle and fridge, and just once he put out his hand to stroke my hip as I brushed past him. The single touch made me shiver with recollection and anticipation. I bumped against the counter and almost spilled the milk.

‘Lola said I’m making her feel a bit tame.’

‘Sex is too good for the young,’ he said calmly.

‘My thoughts exactly.’

He carried the breakfast tray out into the garden for me. It was a very still day. I peeled an orange and left the thick curl of skin on my plate while I divided the segments, pulling the last strips of curdy pith away from the flesh before I offered one to him. He took the crescent and ate it as I absently arranged the others like the petals of a flower.

‘What shall I do?’ I wondered, but I was asking myself rather than him.

‘I did have an idea, after you fell asleep last night.’

He had been lying awake, thinking about me.