His arm around her, he said, ‘It was the sensible thing to do at the time, for you to ask me to step back, much as it pained me. Giving you space gave you the chance to think what you really wanted.’

‘And that’s to be with you,’ she said quietly, her words washing over him as the tide crept ever nearer to where they were sitting.

Seated on her left, Ellis withdrew his arm from around her shoulder and reached for her hand. Since that day ten days ago at the end of May, when he had gone for a walk on the beach and spotted Naomi the other side of her garden gate on her wooden bench, she had, after sharing with him the decision she had reached, stopped wearing her wedding and engagement rings. It was a symbolic gesture that he didn’t underestimate.

While sitting on the bench together that warm day, the sound of voices coming up from the beach and the screeching cry of seagulls overhead and motorboats chugging in and out of the harbour, she had apologised for shutting him out the way she had. She had then told him the truth about her marriage to Colin. He’d listened in horrified disgust, appalled at what she’d put up with.

‘Whatever you do, don’t pity me, or God forbid, judge me,’ she’d said vehemently, when she had eventually fallen silent. ‘After the way I cheated on Colin with you, I accepted that just like me, he was less than perfect. Then later, when the violence started, I accepted that for the sake of the children, putting up with his occasional loss of control was the price I had to pay for maintaining a stable and happy environment for them. Countless women, and men, would do the same as I did. Which doesn’t make it right, I know, but I swore to myself that if he ever laid a hand on the girls, that would be it.’

Ellis wasn’t an expert on the subject, but he knew enough to know that staying with an abusive partner was, in some circumstances, not an act of weakness, but of strength. Which only reinforced the opinion he’d already had of Naomi, that she was a woman of great inner strength and resilience. He hated the thought, though, that his affair with her, as brief as it had been, had made her feel that in some twisted way she deserved what Colin had done to her. Never would Ellis accept that that was right.

Holding her hand now, and stroking her finger that was indented from years of wearing the rings that had symbolised her union with Colin, Ellis said, ‘If we’re to be married, I’d like to buy you a ring; that’s if you want to wear one. If you do, it must be a ring of your own choosing.’

‘I’d sooner wear a ring of our choosing,’ she said. ‘But as lovely as your suggestion is, I think a ring can wait for the time being. We have more pressing decisions to make.’