‘It’s nothing,’ I said, turning back to John. ‘I hope you’d believe me if it ever came down to it.’

‘Obviously I would,’ John said.

I took a deep breath, wanting to say more, wanting to say what I’d been thinking since Vera left my cottage …

‘All right, enough already,’ Vera said, lifting her glass. ‘Cheers. To putting all this behind us.’

We lifted our glasses and clinked them together, quickly falling back into the comfortable familiarity of our little trio, leaving the bombshells of the last few days unspoken.

It wasn’t until our dinners came out, smelling of rosemary and lemon and earthy roasted goodness, and I took a first bite of fish, that I again got up the guts to say what was on my mind. I swallowed. ‘Whatever the plan is, I want to come with you.’

Vera froze, a forkful of bleeding lamb hovering in front of her mouth. John grasped at his wine.

I flaked off another bit of fish, summoning all the courage I had in me. ‘I know that sounds wild, and I know you guys are still figuring out what you’re doing, and we’ve only known each other a short time, but if you do go, I don’t have ties here. My ties here are … you.’

Their hands intertwined, and Vera’s mouth opened to deliver her verdict.

A crash, a wine bottle smashing onto her plate, breaking her glass, sending bones of lamb flying – onto the table, onto John’s dish, into Vera’s lap.

The wine was everywhere, droplets spattering the bottom of Vera’s chin as if she’d been shot in the heart, covering my branzino, turning the white fish purple.

‘Goddamn it,’ Vera yelled.

‘What the hell?’ John looked up, became a statue.

The man responsible for the spill was large, with a thick neck and sausage-fingered hands. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with receding gray-brown hair, and he wore a button-up denim shirt, Brillo-pad hairs crawling from beneath worn cuffs. His eyes were fixed on John.

‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry!’ our waitress cried, hurrying over.

‘Sorry about that,’ the man told her, his voice almost comically apologetic. ‘I tripped on my way out, knocked their wine bottle right over.’

‘It’s okay, sir,’ she said, surveying the damage as everyone around us stared. Vera blotted at the front of her shirt with a napkin, her gaze fixed on her lap. ‘Let me go get someone to help.’

The man’s eyes turned to slits once the waitress was out of sight. He looked disdainful, disgusted, but at the same time disturbingly calm. He didn’t look at me or Vera, only at John.

‘She was sixteen, you pervert,’ he said, before walking away.

THIRTEEN

‘Come over,’ Vera said as soon as we reached Shadow Creek Road. ‘We can’t let the night end like this.’