By the time she reached him that night, she had known immediately that he wasn’t in any fit state to be left. His car door was hanging open and Charlotte could see Elodie still sleeping peacefully in her car-seat.

‘Right,’ she told Ben, who was sitting on the front step, almost catatonic with shock, ‘you’re coming with me. Let’s get you up.’

Ben allowed her to help him into a standing position and they were walking towards Charlotte’s car, when he suddenly stopped and gripped Charlotte’s arms urgently. ‘No! I’m going to wait for her. She’s on her way back. You take Elodie for a drive somewhere and come back for me in half an hour.’

‘No, Ben, that’s not a good idea. We’ll all go to my place together tonight. You can speak to Bella tomorrow, when you’re in a better frame of mind. I’ll bring you back so you can get your car.’

‘Please, Charlie. I just need to speak to her. To sort out a few things. Things I should have sorted out a long time ago.’

Charlotte had hesitated. Ben seemed to have recovered his composure slightly but she still didn’t want to leave him.

‘Please, Charlie,’ he had begged her. ‘Take Elodie. I don’t want Bella being able to get to her.’

‘Why don’t you just come now? We can all go together.’

Ben’s expression had hardened. ‘No. I want to look her in the eye and tell her I know the truth. And I need some answers from her, Charlie. Please just do this for me.’

Charlotte hesitated again, before replying. ‘OK.’

Looking back, it was that one small word that she regretted the most.

But if she had learned one lesson from everything that had happened, it was that no amount of wishing would change the past. It was only the future that you had some control over. The mistakes you made in the past were done. There was nothing you could do about them. But what you could do, was make sure you never repeated those mistakes in the future.

And although it was a cliché, time was a great healer. The pain didn’t ever really leave you, but you did learn how to live with it. How to cope with it. Jo had been the greatest example of that.

‘Are you coming back out?’ Jo asked her now, carefully balancing the tray of drinks, as she headed towards the door.

Charlotte shook her head. ‘Not yet. I think I might need to go and have a nap. I’m so tired all the time.’

‘Good idea,’ Jo said, before walking out onto the terrace.

Charlotte sighed happily. It had been an almost perfect day.

‘What are you smiling at?’ said a voice.

Charlotte turned to see Ben coming in from the garden, holding the toy computer console they had bought Bertie for his birthday. ‘Oh, I was just thinking that this is almost the perfect day.’

Ben put the toy on the island and wrapped his arms around Charlotte, nuzzling his face into her neck and kissing her cheek, as always careful to avoid her scar. ‘Only “almost”?’ He looked up at her with his lovely brown eyes, now back to their twinkling best.