‘Yes, she’s exactly how you described her, the hotshot lawyer…’ He was smiling. It was meant to be a compliment while making fun.

‘Hardly.’ Maya laughed. ‘More like a country bumpkin solicitor – I’m afraid it’s not very exciting. Most of our practice is dealing with tort law and old wills.’

‘Still, you’re living in one of the most scenic corners of Ireland and working in a job you love,’ Liv reminded her.

‘True,’ Maya said. ‘Now, enough about me, what about this one?’ She nodded towards Finn in a friendly way.

‘Oh, I’m very boring. I write fantasy novels and spend most of my time locked up in a room surrounded by weird little character faces and the rest of it, trying to get away from them.’

‘Must be nice,’ Liv said, ‘having your commute to work no further than from bedroom to kitchen.’ She was ready to go now, all buttoned up, with gloves and hat on too.

‘Well, have a lovely time, you two,’ Maya said opening the door for them. When Liv turned to give her a kiss, she whispered, ‘Ooh, la la, exactly what you need to get over Eddie Quirke.’

And Liv couldn’t help but think she might be right. Finn O’Connell was everything Eddie was not. He was tall and classically handsome, clean-cut and he dressed well, as if he’d made an effort for seeing her tonight, which was more than Eddie had ever managed, or Liv suspected, ever would, even for Anya.

They walked towards town for a while, making small talk. He told her about getting out of hospital, home to his little house. He’d left the heating on and it felt like walking into the Sahara. ‘I had to open all the windows for an hour; I thought I’d actually suffocate.’ He laughed. They stopped outside La Redoute. Liv passed the restaurant often on her way to town, but she’d never eaten here. She’d heard that they had a waiting list of up to three months for a table; it was definitely a place to be seen if you were one of Dublin’s glitterati.

‘Well, this is very fancy; you should have warned me,’ she said looking around the restaurant. It was all white, with heavy oak tables and obscene teal-themed artworks on the walls, obviously all by the same artist. They were a collision of subjects, clearly grouped together mainly for their dominant colour. Liv felt completely underdressed. ‘If I’d known we were coming to…’ She trailed off, wondering how on earth he had managed to get a reservation. She silenced a niggling voice that perhaps he’d meant to bring someone else and they’d bailed on him – that was, she knew, measuring him by Eddie’s standards and that simply wasn’t fair.