I flip. ‘Why would you love me? I am angry and I am aimless and I am ugly, with ugly secrets! I don’t deserve you. I didn’t even deserve you as a friend. And you don’t deserve me!’

‘They are not ugly secrets once you’ve shared them,’ says Kemp gently. ‘They are just things that happened to you. Things in your past. They don’t make you less beautiful to me. They don’t alter how I see you. And I want to see you. To see all of you, to know all of you. Always.’

He looks at me. He just looks. I can’t see clearly enough to read him. I don’t want to read him. I’m scared to. But there’s something there in his eyes that speaks of tenderness, of love, that speaks of something I have been searching for my whole life. I look away. I can see Derek, just up the road; that’s his registration number. I march towards the car.

‘I deserve you!’ shouts Kemp. ‘Your past, your present and your future. Most of all, your future. There’s still plenty of it left and I’m right here to share it with you, if you’d only look at me! I deserve you, Prue! I deserve you!’ Kemp shouts so loudly that people on the pavement around him turn their heads and a white van beeps, from the middle of the road, and a man with no top on calls out, ‘You go get her, pal!’

I turn back, one last time. ‘I’ve got to go, Kemp! I’ve really got to go. Derek is here.’

‘Who the fuck’s Derek?’ calls back Kemp. I open the back door of Derek’s Mondeo and get in. ‘I’m coming over to see you again tomorrow, Bertie!’ shouts Kemp. I can hear him through the open window. ‘I’m not giving up! Think about what I’ve said.’

‘No!’ I shout back, a petulant child in my mask. ‘I don’t want to!’

‘Impossible!’ says Kemp to the man with no top on, who’s further up in the line of traffic now, and the man shrugs and raises both palms up and Derek pulls away with an undramatic splutter and I don’t look back any more.

CHAPTER 44

The tinkling bell isn’t working at Loved Before this afternoon.

‘It overheated,’ says Maya as I walk in. It’s quiet in the shop; there’s only an hour or so until it closes. ‘Too much sun, apparently,’ she adds, with a smile. ‘We don’t normally see you on a Saturday. We’ve got some new dresses in, if you’re interested.’

I wander over and have a look at them, without seeing them. Maya has followed me. She looks nice today; she’s wearing white dungarees with a black floral top underneath.