Now she understood; and because she had just been thinking about Chris’s implacable goodness, the understanding came as a shock. It seemed incongruous, even wrong, that he should be thinking about sex at a time like this. And although she told herself, in the same instant, that she was being grossly unfair – that the man had just been through an unimaginable trauma, that he had every reason to be talking to her in this way – she felt a lurch of disgust. At the worst possible moment, she realised, she was changing her mind about Chris. She didn’t want goodness, she didn’t want ardour, she didn’t want risk, she didn’t want – abhorrent, unsayable, but true – an amputee. She wanted what she already knew. She wanted Callum.

Tamsin sat back in her chair and bit her lip. ‘You know, Chris, I think – it’s been wonderful to see you – but you should know, I’m still with Callum. And I shouldn’t really be here, talking like this, not yet. I need to sort things out with him first.’

Chris nodded fervently. ‘Of course, I understand.’

Then Tamsin stood up and took the coward’s way out, kissing Chris’s cheek, smiling her goodbye – with no intention whatsoever of seeing him again.

* * *

As she walked across the hospital car park, it was all Tamsin could do not to break into a run of pure joy. There was no part of her that mistrusted this latest revision of her emotions. She had spent the last year in a state of perpetual uncertainty but she knew that this was it: this was the answer to all the months of confusion. Callum was the answer. Everything that had so irked her about him lately seemed suddenly trivial. Even the fact that he had confided in Leah about his problems had lost some of its sting. She knew he loved her – she had always known that – she had just undervalued that love, until now. It almost felt – although obviously this was nonsense – as if Chris had been sent to them on purpose to show her her true feelings. She wanted to call Callum with the good news, but that was impossible: first, he was probably teaching, and second, how to explain all of this over the phone? Tamsin realised with disappointment that today was an extra-Greek Thursday. Then she had an idea: she would take a train to Denham and surprise him at the end of school. She would tell him everything, all about her doubts, about Chris, about her epiphany in Selly Oak. He had to know how close he had come to losing her, because things weren’t perfect; there was a lot of work to be done. But the main thing, the glorious central thing, was that she knew now that she wanted him.