‘You received it this time, I hope?’ he shouts, starting to walk forward towards me. ‘I didn’t want to take any chances so I thought I’d deliver the important bit in person.’

It’s agonising waiting for him to cross the sand to get to me but my legs feel like they’ve turned to stone.

‘You didn’t marry Verity?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘And you’re not moving to Key West?’

‘I have no plans to.’ He shakes his head.

‘And she’s OK with that?’

‘She is. She was understanding after I explained to her what I’m about to tell you. What I couldn’t put in that email.’

He finally stops right in front of me and it takes every single bit of resolve not to close the gap between us.

‘And what exactly was that?’ I ask.

‘Shit, I didn’t realise I would feel this nervous or expect to feel this kind of pressure. Maybe I should have put everything in the email after all.’ Joel laughs and rubs his palms on his trousers.

‘I think I’ve had enough of emails for a while.’

Joel smiles. ‘You and me both. But on my way over, I thought it would be so easy for me to get all the way here, only to bottle it again and never tell you how I really feel.’

My cheeks blush, because that’s exactly what I did an hour earlier and I’m guessing from him finding me on this beach, then he knows I was there then too. I silently curse and thank Douglas all at once.

I take a step closer and I’m worried he’ll hear the thumping of my heart.

‘So how do you really feel?’

I want to reach out and touch him to make sure he’s real and I’m not just imagining him.

‘I spent that summer falling in love with you, Edie, and I tried for years to put you to the back of my mind and move past it all. Only when I saw you in Soph’s garden a couple of months ago, all the same feelings came flooding back. It was as if they never left; they’d gone into hibernation, waiting for the moment you walked back into my life to awaken them.’

It sounds so familiar because that’s exactly what happened to me.

‘But if you felt that way, then why were you getting married?’

‘We’d already started to apply for the intention-to-marry visa by the time you turned up at Soph’s, and I carried on with it because it was the easy way out. It’s what I’ve done for years, pretty much since I sent you that email all those years ago. I worked out that it hurts a lot less to not put yourself out there than it does to stay in a situation where you risk getting hurt.’