Max feels an awkward corner has been successfully negotiated. Tomorrow they’ll check out a couple of rentals in the town. He shrugs away Judith’s probable annoyance and follows Oscar down the stairs, whistling just below his breath. After a moment he realizes that he’s whistling the opening bars from ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’. He shrugs. There might well be trouble ahead but he can’t give up on Cara now.

CHAPTER THREE

On the next few mornings Cosmo walks round the head of the creek and into the town. He goes into the Coffee Shop and orders a double espresso, but there is no sign of Amy. He waits as long as he can without looking conspicuous and then gives up and goes down to sit by the harbour and watch the traffic of small boats and the passenger ferry heading up the estuary to Kingsbridge. He’s working on a new idea for a blog and looking for a theme he can use with accompanying photographs. Water seems to be an obvious choice here – the sea, rivers, moorland streams – but he’s hoping for something unusual. Everybody these days is a photographer so it needs to be really good. Today the town is being battered by strong westerlies. The water is choppy, slapping against the quayside, flags smack and the boats dance on their moorings. He sets up his camera and takes a video, wishing that there might be some sort of emergency that would bring the RNLI crew dashing out, clambering on to the boat, heading out to sea, but he must content himself with sight of the local ferry beating its way through the spray to Portlemouth, and the cry of the gulls as they are blown about like feathery rags above it.

‘So you’re a photographer?’ says a voice behind him.

And here she is, standing watching him with a smile, as if she knows that he’s been hoping to see her for the last few days. He can’t understand this feeling of happy anticipation that seizes him at the sight of her. The amusement in her eyes, the quirk of her lips, put him on his mettle, but in a fun, exciting way. Becks challenges him to be as clever as she is, to be as quick, as successful, and he enjoys it, but Amy’s is a different kind of challenge. This is a challenge to amuse, to entertain, to be worthy of keeping her company.

‘I wish I were,’ he says, putting his camera back in its case. ‘It’s just trying to find something different. What is it? That genius that sets the great apart?’

She nods, getting it, agreeing with him.

‘It’s a way of seeing, I guess. Of having an instinct for an angle, for a shape, for a composition, that’s never quite been done before.’