As he stood back, he finally noticed how many pictures there were of the estate, not just of his father and Lily, but of the grape harvests. Memories he’d pushed to the back of his mind surfaced. The whole town, it seemed, crowding into the channels between the vines, snipping at pale bunches of mottled grapes – real grapes, not the strange perfect bunches from a supermarket – armed with secateurs and filling plastic buckets. He suddenly remembered following his father, driving the ATV, and tossing bucket after bucket of grapes into the trailer. Back then, Henry had snuck away the first chance he could get, but these pictures of the post-harvest celebrations taunted him. The raised glasses and happy faces of people who had worked hard, and loved it. Sprawled out beneath the trees on the estate, hampers of food, laughter …

He could almost chart the progression of years by the changes in Lily’s features, but it was his father that drew him close. The way that his body showed the signs of ageing, the wrinkles, the increasing stoop to his shoulders, the streaks of white in his hair visible in the grey-toned pictures. His fingers clenched around the handle of the granite chopping board, and he was drawn back to the present by sounds in the kitchen.

Pushing the memories aside, he stepped behind the counter and leaned up against the doorframe, oddly content to watch Lily in her element. She was twisting the handle on an old metal pasta machine, gently teasing a wide strip of golden coloured dough out onto a large wooden, floured, butcher’s block. As she guided the pasta sheet from where it draped over her forearm onto the surface, without looking, she reached into a small ceramic pot for a pinch of something which she threw into a large boiling metal pot that looked as if it had seen better days.

She wiped her hand on her apron, and pushed back another stray tendril of hair that must have come loose while she’d been kneading the pasta dough with her forearm. Flushed and focused, she looked glorious. Until a brief stutter in movements that had been fluid until now betrayed her awareness of him.

‘That was delicious,’ he said.

‘You sound surprised.’

‘Do I? I was aiming for impressed.’

‘Aim higher.’

Henry bit his cheek to prevent himself from responding. He quite liked this dismissive streak in her. Over the years his success and looks had brought a wide range of reactions from the opposite sex, most of whom were just as eager to get into his wallet as his bed, but Lily, it seemed, wanted nothing of the sort.

‘Yes, chef,’ he replied with a smile.

Her rich, dark gaze snapped to his, before returning to the pasta machine where she was adjusting the setting. Had he caught a reluctant lift to her lips, or was that wishful thinking?