She frowned, clearly not quite sure what he had to say, but then her expression smoothed into that beautiful openness he’d come to expect from her. ‘At the beginning, seems to be where most people start,’ she said, with a gentle smile.

Despite her calm assurance he couldn’t help but pace the room. He’d never told anyone this, not even Ben. And all this time, it had been tearing him up.

‘That summer was really hard for me. I’d been at university for a year and it had been like a breath of fresh air. Finally being away from both my parents. Blake, who was almost completely absent and Mum, who was so desperate to make up for the disastrous early years she’d give me almost anything I wanted, not realizing how damaging and cloying that was. But being at university? Getting a taste of what life was like by myself … it was intoxicating. There I was, with mates from uni, doing silly things, getting drunk … meeting girls.’

He cast a look at Lily. ‘I didn’t cheat on her,’ he said, needing her to know that. Needing her to understand.

‘Henry, we were young. You were eighteen. Even if you had—’

‘But I didn’t,’ he stressed.

‘I believe you,’ she said simply, not realizing how much those three little words meant to him and desperately hoping that she’d still feel that way after he’d told her what had happened that night.

‘I think it might have been easier if I had. But I fear what I did was worse. I knew that I didn’t want to be with her, but I just didn’t have the courage to just tell her. I kept on hoping that it would just peter out. That she’d get bored of waiting for me. But when she sensed that I was pulling away, she became more insistent, more needy,’ he said, thinking of the texts and the phone calls. He remembered being in his dorm room, drinking with his friends or – on the few occasions he did try to study – having to get up and answer his phone to a hysterical Claudia, crying one time, or giggling hysterically another. ‘I knew that she was having a hard time with her parents, hated being at school, hated being in the Cove, all of which I could totally relate to, but … I just wrote it off. I kept telling her that she’d be out of there soon, just like I was. She just had to wait. But then I’d go for a few weeks without hearing from her and each time, it felt like a relief. Like, that might have been the time she’d got the message, and I’d not have to actually say it.