Jude clambered out of the river, struggling up the bank. Lauren stood, hands on hips, and watched him in disbelief.

‘What,’ she asked, astonished, ‘are you doing here?’

Her ex-lover was soaked through. He was dripping all over the grass. If this was supposed to be a Mr Darcy moment, it had gone horribly wrong. Jude looked distraught, and there was duckweed sticking to his shirt and in his hair. The other tea drinkers in the garden stop with cups halfway to mouths that, to a man, have fallen open.

‘I might ask you the same thing,’ he said breathlessly.

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘It was obvious who you were with, when he didn’t turn in for work.’ Jude flicked a thumb in the direction of the Mill House where Zak was currently ordering their tea. ‘I saw you, Lauren. I saw you drive away with him. I was out of my mind. I had no idea where you might be going. If I’d had my car with me, I would have followed you right away. I tried to get information out of the other guys at work, but none of them knew a thing. Or pretended they didn’t.’

‘I didn’t even know myself until just before we left,’ she told him.

Jude looked unconvinced. ‘Then I remembered that he’d bought a weekend cottage in the Cotswolds. Clearly, that was my starting point. You can find out anything from the internet these days.’

‘So it was you looking over the hedge this morning?’

Jude nodded bleakly.

‘I don’t know why you bothered,’ Lauren said, sounding as hard as she could while inside, her stomach was twisting into knots.

‘You’re sleeping with him,’ he said. His voice was laced with anguish. ‘How could you?’

‘You’ve been sleeping with your wife for the five years that we’ve been seeing each other,’ she reminded him.

‘This is totally different.’ Jude raked his fingers through his wet hair. ‘I had no choice.’

‘You had a choice,’ Lauren said quietly. ‘We both did. And now I’ve made another choice. It’s over between us, Jude. What I do and who I do it with is no longer your business.’

‘I’m going to go in there and knock his head off.’

Lauren sighed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s at least try to be dignified about this.’ Though it was hard to see how, when faced with a dripping wet ex-lover standing in front of her and the scenes with her dressed as a pineapple still sharp in her mind.

Jude’s shoulders drooped. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear the thought of you with another man.’

Lauren didn’t dredge up all the years that she’d been tortured by him being with another woman.

‘Do you love him?’ The look of pain on his face was unbearable.