‘OK, fine. Really? It’s because I know how much and how hard you can dream about your wedding. I know how you can spend days, weeks, months, planning every single detail – what kinds of bridesmaids’ dresses, your own bridal dress, the family and friends you want to invite to show the whole world that you love and are loved. And I know, Henry,’ she said taking a desperate breath, ‘I know what it’s like to have that taken away from you. To have it not only removed from your life, but for the shame and embarrassment to know that you were played for a fool. Used like a sodding piggy bank. For all that to have been a sham. A pretence. A lie. It destroys you,’ she whispered, her voice breaking on the word as memories of that time after Alistair, of the realization that he’d not only left, but used her. The dark, black hole of months she’d experienced after she’d returned to Hawke’s Cove. ‘It takes away your sense of self and your faith, not just in other people. But yourself. Because it was me who believed him, me who put my faith in him, me who refused to see that he wasn’t interested in me. In my hopes and dreams. He wasn’t interested in my life and didn’t hope to have a future and a family with me. He left. And I had to call everyone and tell them he’d left. I had to cancel the venue, the vendors, I had to call the guests and announce to each and every one of them that I wasn’t worthy of a wedding, of love. That I wasn’t good enough.

‘And I don’t care what you say, Henry, but I’m going to make damn sure that V or any of my friends never have to go through that.’

She finally looked up at him to see his eyes wide and shocked, that horrid mixture of sadness and sympathy and helplessness that had been inflicted on her by almost everyone in town after those first few months.

‘Jesus, Lily, Oliver would never …’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘But that’s not the point.’

Henry was really shocked. All this time, he’d seen her as such a driving force, a power to be reckoned with. He’d seen her in all her glory in the kitchen, at the harvest, and not for a second did he imagine the kind of hurt she so clearly still felt beneath the surface. And in that moment, he realized that she didn’t see it.

‘Do you know what an incredible person you are, and what a complete arse-hat Alistair was?’