‘I know you were seeing her.’ She held the phone away from her while he absolutely lost it on the other end, but the more he spoke, the more she knew this was the right thing to do. At the end of it all, when he’d played himself out, she waited a beat before she spoke. ‘You’re right about only one thing, Eddie. You still have the keys to my flat and I’d like them back. I’ve moved all your stuff out. I’ve left everything in the workshop. I still have your keys for there by the way, so I propose we do a swap – otherwise… well, I’m going to have to ask Maya to step in.’ And, with that she ended the call. She absolutely wouldn’t put it past him to turn up and let himself in after the holidays, and she knew the sensible thing to do was change the locks; perhaps Pete would help her out with that.

The call shook her. She wasn’t completely naïve – she hadn’t expected it to be easy, but she knew she had to tell him while she was fired up for it. The thing about working in A&E was that you never knew what the day would bring and even a very short shift could empty her out, so making a call like that would be impossible afterwards.

She sat in the tiny alcove by the window. Maya had made this into a window seat for her – they’d bought the deep velvet cushion together. She sat there for a long time after she hung up the phone on Eddie. Her thoughts raced away from her. She supposed it wouldn’t take long for word to get round the village that she’d called time on their relationship. She imagined Eddie, sitting in Flannelly’s for the next few days, milking his sorrows for all they were worth. She pictured his mother, pursing her lips and making nasty insinuations about how she’d never thought much of those Latimer girls anyway. The only blessing was that anyone decent in the village had the measure of both sides a long time before this happened. And then, Liv thought of her parents, having to put up with the Quirkes for Christmas dinner while she’d been up here working without any idea of what was going on right under her nose. She had to speak to them next.