‘I’ll be fine. I’m so sorry you’ve had to listen to me whining on. I hope you both have a brilliant time. People say it’s an amazing place … all that walking above the clouds thing I read about. Love to Brooks.’

She was hanging on, forcing out her brightest self for just ten seconds longer while they said goodbye. Then she took a juddering breath and burst into tears.

After lunch, Connie wrapped herself up warmly and took a walk to the high street. It wasn’t that she needed anything in particular: she was heating tinned soup and eating a lot of toast instead of real cooking. She just needed human contact, even if it was only the barista serving her coffee or one of the friendly booksellers in Waterstones. It was raining, but the hill was crowded as usual, a sea of umbrellas jostling for position on the pavement.

She’d almost stopped looking around for Jared. Almost. That chapter of her life, she kept telling herself, was closed. The fallout was her main concern now. But as she crossed the wide road towards her favourite café, a man walking down the hill towards her – at least a hundred metres away – raised his black umbrella for a split second before turning right into the narrow side-street by the bakery. He was in jeans, muffled to the neck in a heavy parka, hood up, but even that tiny glimpse stopped Connie in her tracks, a cry discharging involuntarily from her throat.

Him? From the thrashing of her heart she was certain it was. But when she’d taken a few deep breaths, calmed down a little, although still staring fixedly at the entrance to the alley where he’d disappeared, she decided she must have been mistaken. Just my crazy brain playing tricks, she told herself, as she reached the café, with its steamed-up windows, coffee machine churning and cosy, all-pervading smell of damp wool. She found a seat at the back, her hands shaking as she unzipped her coat.

Over a large latte, she reviewed what she’d seen. The image was still clear in her mind, but it wasn’t a clear image. There was the rain and the dim winter light, the other pedestrians, the umbrella and his hood. But she had seen enough, at least, to precipitate jumpy glances towards the door each time it swung open.

By the time Connie got home she was a bag of nerves. Every umbrella harboured Jared Temple, every brush against her arm on the crowded pavement was his hand, every shout was her name on his lips. She didn’t feel safe. She went round the house checking all the locks, as if she expected him to have broken in, or maybe walked through walls, to be standing there, anyway, in the middle of Tessa’s sitting room as if he had every right to be there.