After a long, silent moment, he said, ‘I’d like to lie about that so you’d keep him a bit longer and I’d have excuses to see you, but you’re right. A Doggo hug is just what Hayley needs.’

Her heart clenched like a fist with long, scratchy fingernails.

‘Lily—’ he hesitated ‘—you and I, we haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not “with” Hayley any more than I was before. She just needs help. If she wasn’t my ex or if she was a bloke you’d have no trouble with this.’

‘But she is your ex and she isn’t a bloke,’ she pointed out.

Silently, she helped him cart Doggo’s dog cave into his car, which, unlike hers, was big enough to take it, and shove his luggage onto the back seat. Lastly, she gave Doggo’s lead back to Isaac, careful not to touch him. Then she squatted down to give Doggo a big hug. ‘Thank you for your company,’ she said formally, half-blinded with tears. ‘See you Friday at work, Isaac. I’m sorry our time was cut short.’ And she jumped up and ran down the path at the side of Carola’s house.

Soon she was safely shut in her apartment. She closed the blinds over the French doors and switched the TV on, turning the volume up loud.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Snow. Not the lovely Swiss kind like drifting feathers but tiny, twirling flakes that couldn’t seem to make up their minds whether to fall down or fly up. Lily drank her morning coffee on Friday, watching through the French doors as the tiny flakes postured and flirted but hardly covered the ground. The lawn looked as if someone had thrown a net curtain over it.

She thought of the snow in Switzerland on the day they’d left, filling the air as if it couldn’t wait to erase all the colour in the world. That joyous trek through the snow to St Jost, Doggo bounding, the teenagers laughing and snowballing. Isaac smiling, his eyes alight at being in the great outdoors, the place he loved to be.

The part of his plans where he retrained as an outdoor pursuits instructor would still fit his schedule, she realised. Hayley only needed his help for a few weeks. That those few weeks could have been Lily’s made her feel as if she’d been eating the holly leaves from the bush in Carola’s garden – prickly and sick.