‘You still take a notebook everywhere?’ he asks. He smells the same.

She never takes much notice of this vital sense, but her olfactory memory is stirred now. She can’t pinpoint a place or a time, but she remembers an atmosphere. An atmosphere of youth and sunshine and endless sex. She’s touched his skin more than anyone’s in her life and she remembers how they were permanently draped around one another. As if they couldn’t bear to break skin contact. She runs her eyes over his face and hair and imagines pressing her forehead against his. The urge to pull him inside her is almost overpowering.

‘Take my number. If I ever get down to the South Coast, I’ll be sure to come and say hello.’ He stands, breaking the moment.

Does he feel this too? This familiarity, this unfathomable sense of ownership after all this time?

‘I’d like that,’ she says, but she can hardly get the words out.

He flicks through the pages.

‘All these beautiful birds. You always were so talented. Look at this,’ he marvels. She’s so private about her notebooks, but she’s handed it over to him without a second thought. She’s proud that he likes what he sees on the pages. She watches as he points to a clean page and writes down his mobile number and she knows that, from now on, this will forever be the most precious of all her notebooks.

‘You should get in the warm,’ he says. His eyes lock with hers. Those little freckles near the bridge of his nose are still beautiful.

From further along, towards the entrance, a woman calls out. ‘Dad? Dad, you coming?’

He waves and Helga follows his gaze to the blonde woman. She must be in her forties and she has an athletic figure and wide smile, just like his. She’s very attractive, Helga realises. Linus’s genes were always going to produce splendid offspring, though. That was a given. Helga wonders how it would feel if that confident young woman was her daughter.

He passes back the book. Helga is trapped in his gaze, but it’s too bright, too exposing. Because he’s cracked something open inside her, something long buried. It’s desire, she realises, but it’s something more, too, a heart ache that feels so strong, she worries that she might actually be having a heart incident.

‘It’s so good to see you again, Helga,’ he says. ‘So good.’

She nods. ‘You, too.’

‘I’m sorry I’ve got to go, but my daughter is in charge today and if I don’t do what she wants …?’ he confides with an old Linus grin. He doesn’t look as if he really minds being bossed around. She feels a childish sense of loss that he’s going. She wants to be introduced to his daughter. She wants him to tell her that she’s his long-lost lover.

‘Please call me, Helga. Please. I’d so love to talk to you, but I can’t here.’

‘I will. I promise.’