‘Hello, Mr Ashton, have you come to help?’

Not trusting herself to turn around, Naomi concentrated hard on reaching for the large gothic-style cobweb that was draped around the stonework tracery above the window.

‘I have indeed,’ she heard Ellis reply. ‘I caught a rumour that it was all hands on deck here.’

‘How very kind of you.’

‘So what can I do? Your wish,’ he said grandly, ‘is my command.’

At his words Naomi suddenly felt light-headed and in danger of falling off the ladder. He had said those words to her last night when, once again, he’d taken her by the hand upstairs to his bedroom. He had been about to draw the curtains, but she had stopped him. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she’d said, ‘but I can’t recall the last time I made love in the moonlight.’

‘Then your wish is my command,’ he’d said.

Afterwards, and with the room lit only by the moon streaming its impossibly romantic silvery light through the window, they’d lain in each other’s arms.

‘I wish it could be like this always,’ she’d said.

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘Because … because everything always changes, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe it will change to something even more wonderful.’

Remembering the intensity of his words, of the tenderness of his mouth on hers, the way her body responded to his, she held on even more firmly to the stepladder.

In response to Ellis’s question, there followed a chorus of eager female voices – some of them quite girlish – rushing to request his help in their assigned tasks. Most vocal were Katie Murdoch and Linsey Bales, who claimed they needed a strong man to help move the two bookcases in the book corner.

Jennifer vetoed their requests and proposed that Ellis helped her shift the furniture in the vestry.

‘Happy to oblige,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Oh hello, Naomi,’ he remarked as he passed the stepladders. ‘I didn’t see you up there. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. And you?’

‘Never better. Would you like me to do the high bits for you?’

‘Oh, that’s quite all right, I can manage. It’s very generous of you to help us.’

‘It’s my pleasure.’

Jennifer was having none of the small talk. ‘Chop, chop, Mr Ashton,’ she said briskly, ‘onwards to the vestry where I’m going to make full use of you.’

‘Is that so?’ he responded with a wink up at Naomi. ‘But please, call me Ellis.’

It was all Naomi could do to bite down on the laugh that was threatening to burst out of her.

That evening, perched on a stool in Ellis’s cosy kitchen, Naomi watched him add two sirloin steaks to the frying pan on the hob, then return his attention to the lime and honey dressing he was making. She could happily watch him moving about his kitchen for hours at a time. Whenever she was in his company, she felt something within her loosen, an undoing of the tangle of knots inside her. Being with him made her feel that for the greater part of her life she had sleepwalked through it.