‘Liv, where are you?’ It was Eddie. To be fair, she’d have thought he’d be completely hammered by now, and she didn’t want to be proposed to when he was too drunk to ask properly. It was funny, but hearing about her father had pushed her priorities around. Now being proposed to came a distinct second after spending time with her dad. She’d sent Eddie a couple of texts over the course of the evening to make up for not going to the pub, but he hadn’t replied. It would have been too noisy in the bar to hear the notifications probably.

‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ she asked.

‘But I thought you were going to turn up later?’ He sounded disappointed. Well, she supposed, at least it was nice that he missed her. ‘And it’s nearly closing time now,’ he said.

‘I know. Hang on, I’ll drive down and you can buy me a glass of lemonade before they call time.’ She looked across at her parents, both snoozing contentedly. She shivered at the idea of having to leave the cosy sitting room and head out into the freezing air. God, she’d love to snuggle up here for the night, but this might be the moment – she couldn’t not turn up if Eddie was going to propose to her in the snow, could she? ‘It’ll take me a few minutes.’ It took ten minutes to shrug out of her pyjamas and brush a little blusher on her cheeks and then she was driving her dad’s jeep into the village. The snow really had begun to pack up now. A car would be useless at getting out onto the main road, which had a steep hill; it was sheer enough to send her backwards if the roads were any way icy.

Eddie was waiting at the front door of the pub when she arrived. No lemonade so, it looked as if she’d missed closing time. For a moment, she thought there was something different about him, something unfamiliar, as if she’d missed a step and somehow the universe had let her off on the wrong stop. He dropped the remains of his cigarette to the ground and mashed it into a dirty black mark on the snow.

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’ He gave her that lopsided grin that made her heart flip over with love for him. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked as he hopped into the jeep next to her. ‘It’s bloody freezing. What took you so long?’