Panting slightly and beginning to perspire she debated just running to join them, but still couldn’t persuade herself that she wouldn’t look pathetic. Why oh why didn’t Dermot dispatch them on their separate ways to work on their pieces?

She decided running to join them would only work if she had something of vital importance to tell them. What could she say? She couldn’t say there was a fire because there obviously wasn’t, and anyway they were in the garden. Floods and swarms of locusts wouldn’t work either. What about a particularly beautiful bit of garden, perhaps with a butterfly or, better, a dragonfly involved? She wiped her brow. No, she wouldn’t just look keen like an ambitious Girl Guide but barking mad because if there was a dragonfly, there was no way it would still be there, even if everybody did troop off to look at it. And if it was a particularly fine bit of planting involving old roses and lavender, there would be no need for her to have run.

Sighing, she stumped off towards the stumpery – at least it sounded cool.

She spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between feeling like a very bad private detective, trying to stalk Dermot, and like a detective’s quarry, trying to avoid being joined by any students, so if she did manage to get Dermot on his own, she would be on her own too.

When they finally met up in the tea room, she said to him casually, ‘It’s a lovely garden, isn’t it? There must be acres and acres. I don’t think I ever spotted you.’ This was a lie but she didn’t want to say she’d only spotted him from a distance because it would imply she’d been looking.

‘Oh, I found a really hidden-away corner in the wood,’ he said. ‘I read my book.’ Seeing her react he added, ‘No, not written by me. If I told you it was poetry would you think I was impossibly pretentious?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded, smiling, lying again. ‘But it’s very writerly, so I’ll forgive you.’

Back on the bus she sat at the back and soon fell into a reverie. Trying to get Dermot on his own was just too stressful. If he fancied her – and it was increasingly likely that he didn’t – he could seek her out.