With her finger trembling over the shutter release button, she watched and waited until a bird, wings spread wide, swooped down into view. That was her moment. It wasn’t even as long as a second. She pushed the button, heard the satisfying click as the image was captured and the whirr as the film automatically wound on to the next frame.

She lowered the camera and looked at the scene which had already changed in front of her eyes. She only wished she could bring her picture up on a screen straight away and see if she had captured it just right.

‘You have to have patience,’ Ewan told her. ‘But I can guarantee that no matter what the physical print turns out like, you have that image burned into your mind for now. And that’s not a bad thing.’

Jo thought the feeling of him so close to her was something else that was also burned into her mind. And that, she knew, was potentially a very bad thing.

Jo couldn’t quite believe that Ewan had booked them accommodation in the luxurious Harvey’s Point Hotel. She’d have been happy with a B&B, but she couldn’t deny she was blown away with the Lakeshore Suite Ewan had arranged. She snapped some pictures of it on her phone, already wishing she had a proper camera like Ewan’s. She took pictures of the balcony overlooking Lough Eske, and the claw-footed bath she was planning to take full advantage of later. She typed three smiley-faced emojis and sent the pictures to her mum, Erin, Noah and Libby. Thankfully she stopped before she sent the same picture to Lorcan, knowing that he wouldn’t appreciate it. She didn’t have to wait long until she got a series of messages back, exclaiming how impressed they were, and how jealous. Noah added a quick ‘Be careful!’ which Jo tried to take in the spirit in which it was offered.

She was replying to him that she was always, always careful when a new message notification landed in her phone from Lorcan. Her stomach tightened, and not in a good way. She didn’t want to read it, afraid he would call her out on something else. But she also knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore it. It would niggle and gnaw at her until she dealt with whatever it contained. Jo Campbell had never been the kind of person to confidently delete people, and their messages, from her life.

She checked the time and saw she was meant to meet Ewan in the bar in five minutes. If she read the message straight away, she thought, she wouldn’t have time to stew over what he had written. She’d be consumed in her work and also, she realised, in trying to get a proper read of Ewan.