‘I’m – I’m well.’ She tried to pull herself together. Adam had always been tall but now he was much broader in the shoulders, and like Olive, he looked older than his years. He was still handsome in his rough-hewn way but now there was a brooding quality to his face that hadn’t been there in his youth. ‘And you?’ she said more composedly. ‘How are you? I met Alice yesterday and she’s enchanting.’

Enchanting. It wasn’t a word the old Ruby would have chosen but it fitted in with the way she now spoke, everything about her, in fact. The hat and coat she was wearing must have cost a fortune, even he could see that, and he knew nowt about women’s fashions and the rest of it. It was painful to look at her face, the cheeks a soft, creamy pink, the heavily lashed eyes and her small but full mouth. He remembered how it had felt to kiss those lips . . .

‘You were going to go without seeing me.’ He voiced the thought that had sat like a lump of lead in his chest since Alice had spoken of her Auntie Ruby being home the evening before.

It was a statement, not a question, but Ruby answered it as though it was the latter. ‘Well, yes, I only came to see my mam and da for a little while. I have to get back to work tomorrow.’

He would have walked to the ends of the earth for a glimpse of her. His Adam’s apple moved swiftly and he swallowed, but no words came through the anger and hurt.

‘I have to catch my train.’ It was a covert request for him to move out of her way but he ignored it. ‘I need to go, Adam.’

‘I think of you all the time.’ He was painfully conscious of his dirty working clothes, his big hobnailed boots and his old cap in a way he had never been before. She looked so perfect, so – what was that word she’d used about Alice? Oh, aye – so enchanting. ‘There’s not a day, an hour, when I’m not thinking of you.’

‘Stop it.’ She was stepping back away from him, an expression of something akin to distaste on her face. ‘You have a wife and a beautiful little daughter, it’s them you should be thinking of.’

‘Don’t you ever think of me?’ he ground out, hot colour flooding his skin.

She looked him full in the face. ‘Not in that way, no. I remember the good times, the happy times, of course. You were part of my childhood and youth, after all. But everything’s different now. I’ve moved on with my life, Adam, and so should you. You have a family and you could be happy if you put the past behind you.’