She stopped to smile. Ben did seem like a fairy tale hero sometimes.

Tuesday evening was the most difficult time of all as she tried to explain to her aunt and uncle that she’d got a job in Australia and was leaving at the end of the week. She’d never lied to them before and felt weighed down with guilt, but somehow she didn’t dare share her fragile dreams and hopes about herself and Ben with anyone. They might ridicule her or be horrified. And she couldn’t bear that.

In the end her aunt and uncle sat in near silence, looking at her so unhappily her heart twisted with pity. ‘It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s just that I have to… to see something of the world and this… well, it’s a golden opportunity.’ But she could tell they were hurt and puzzled, and that took the edge off her excitement.

Sarah and Don were away in the Lake District, so she went home to write her cousin a letter that would explain about the alleged job. She had to write it three times. The first effort was so stilted it didn’t sound like her. The second got spotted with tears. The third was short, promising a longer letter as soon as she was settled in Australia. It would have to do. Even to write that had torn her apart. Sarah was more like a sister and she would miss her far more than Sandy.

Megan had the feeling she was living in a dream, or in a world like one of those surreal Ascher drawings where you followed stairs round in circles that seemed to be going down and yet were leading you back up to your starting point. If Ben had been with her, she would have felt better about it all, but although he rang every evening, that wasn’t the same. She needed to be held by him and see his smile.

Although she couldn’t tell him that what she was doing frightened her, it really did. In the darkness of the night she admitted that to herself, but at no time did she change her mind.

Just for once in her life she was going to take a risk and nothing, absolutely nothing was going to stop her from marrying Ben Saunders.

On the Wednesday, Sandy was going to drive her to the nearest station where she would take a train up to London to stay with Ben’s Aunt Louisa. She was leaving the car with Sandy’s husband, who had promised to sell it for her on commission and pay the money into her bank account.