Lorcan was silent as he loaded the cases, then me, then Bod into the car. He folded himself behind the wheel, checking I was OK with the dog on my lap. I sat, waiting to see if he planned to say anything about the situation we’d just left, but instead he turned the key to start the engine. The elephant in the room from the pub had clearly followed us out and was now sprawled across the back seat, making itself comfortable.

‘It really is the most beautiful countryside around here,’ I said after a while, as Lorcan hugged the car to the bendy road, the ancient cliffs falling away to the sea on one side. The weather today was overcast and as a result the water below was like pewter, looking more ominous than it had yesterday when we’d watched it crash and sparkle from the secret garden within the castle grounds. As I stole a look at Lorcan it felt as if the ocean below us wasn’t the only thing mercurial. His eyes concentrated on the road, but his fingers gripped the wheel tighter than they had previously.

‘Is everything all right?’ I said eventually. Clearly it wasn’t but the atmosphere was so thick the elephant in the back seat could have cut it with his trunk.

‘Grand.’

Right. Well, that answered that question, then. Silence resumed. I thought about turning on the radio but that seemed a bit presumptuous and had he wanted to listen to something, I guessed he’d probably have turned it on himself. I could understand that. Sometimes when my mind was churning I needed to distract it with an audio book, or podcast. For me, words that I was interested in were a better escape than music in those circumstances. But there were also days when I wanted, even needed, silence. Perhaps that was how Lorcan dealt with things and, if so, then it was only fair to leave him to his musings.

‘Sorry you were in the middle of that.’

I turned and smiled at him, a genuinely wide one. ‘I’m a wedding planner. Believe me, I’ve been in the middle of far worse than that. If no one walks away bleeding or with clumps of hair gripped between their fingers, I call it a win.’

Lorcan glanced at me and I was relieved and oddly pleased to see a smile, albeit a shadow of the one I’d found myself admiring over the weekend – purely from the point of view that he would look good in the wedding photos, obviously. Still, it was a smile and that was something.

‘Sounds brutal.’

‘It can be.’

‘But let me guess, you wouldn’t change it for the world.’

‘No, you’re right,’ I said, running my hand over Bod’s teddy-bear-like fur. ‘I love what I do.’

‘I imagine everyone thinks you have quite the glamorous life?’