Although she’d been warned it would do her no good, Laura started by knocking at the door and pressing the bell for quite a long time. Inevitably, recollections of what had so nearly happened the last time she had been in Dermot’s house came flooding back: the laughing, clinging, shuffling entry into his house, when she was very drunk and he not much better, when they hadn’t wanted to be separated for an instant. The memories were not helpful.

Would she ever feel that degree of passion again? When she did finally go to bed with a man for the first time, would she want it as much? Or would losing her virginity just seem like getting rid of something that had become a burden? She knew it was unrealistic but she couldn’t believe she would ever have that chemistry – at least for that one night – with anyone else. There was something about Dermot that made every nerve ending alert and tingling. How long would it take to find another, more suitable man who made her feel like that? She could end up a virgin at fifty!

These thoughts kept her occupied until she felt she’d tried conventional methods of entry long enough. It was time for the back-door approach.

The back door was, of course, locked. It hadn’t been, she remembered, when she’d sneaked out of it to run back to the b. and b. in the early hours. Now, knocking on it, pushing at it and even giving it a surly kick only indicated it was locked and bolted.

Now what? Maybe shouting. Maybe if he heard it was she, and not some journalist, he might let her in.

‘Hello! Dermot! It’s me! Laura!’ It was not easy for a normally quiet person to make such a noise, to yell her name to the world, but she did her best.

While the neighbourhood might have heard her calls, Dermot obviously hadn’t. She’d have to think of something else.

She walked round the house and at last spotted a slightly open window. It wasn’t in the best place for an inexperienced housebreaker, but it would have to do. It was the top half of a hopper-type window. Although the curtains were drawn, judging by the position she was fairly sure it opened on to the sitting room. If she could get up high enough and get her arm in, perhaps she might be able to open the bottom half of it with a stick or something. The irony of it all hit her; the last time she was at Dermot’s house, she was sneaking out of it. Here she was now doing her darnedest to sneak in.