‘How are you? You didn’t answer my messages.’

She heard him shifting about, a low grunt.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, when he didn’t reply.

‘Yeah …’

‘You don’t sound it, Devan.’

There was an irritable harrumph. ‘Sorry about that.’

Connie winced at his sarcastic tone. She knew he must have been drinking and regretted calling. ‘OK, well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she said curtly, and was about to hang up when she heard his voice.

‘Connie, wait. Sorry, sorry … I’ve just had a bad day with my back and I’m feeling a bit low … missing you.’

Now she felt terrible. ‘Poor you,’ she said, more gently, searching around for something she could tell him that might cheer him up, and finding nothing. Recounting what a beautiful day it had been here would hardly cut it. This was new, the lack of spontaneity in their exchanges – they’d never been short of something to say to each other.

‘How’s it going with you?’ she heard Devan ask, obviously making an effort now. ‘Any PPs so far?’

She pulled herself together and adopted her brightest tone. ‘Ha! Well, I think that title goes to Sandra, who’s seriously Hyacinth Bucket and makes me nervous, because she always seems to be brewing a kick-off. But, to be fair, she hasn’t been too bad, and the rest seem reassuringly normal.’ As she said it, though, her thoughts returned to Jared Temple and his grand godmother. ‘Well, perhaps not entirely normal …’

She heard him chuckle and it lifted her heart. ‘I miss you too, you know,’ she said sincerely. Because in that moment she would have liked nothing better than to be sitting curled up on the sofa between Devan and Riley, pulling apart the TV drama they’d just watched, a glass of wine in her hand, the dog’s head warming her bare toes. ‘You’d like Varenna, where we were today. You come in on the ferry and there are these ranks of cute houses – terracotta and ochre, cream and red – nestling on the hillside around this gorgeous harbour. It takes your breath away.’

She heard him sigh. ‘Maybe you can show me one day.’

Connie loved the idea, but wondered if she ever would. Devan generally preferred to take his holidays in the Highlands, the Lake District or Northumberland, with the accompanying horizontal rain and peat bogs. And, although he seemed obsessed with them travelling the world, she wasn’t sure either of them was in the mood, at the moment, to take any trip together.

They talked on for a while, an easy, companionable conversation at this distance, during which Connie was able to daydream that Devan was back to normal and that things would always be good like this between them.