But when she said goodbye and lay down beneath the soft hotel duvet, she felt the sadness return. Can we only communicate properly these days when we’re nine hundred miles apart? she wondered, as she drifted off to sleep.

5

Dinah waved her over. ‘Our turn,’ she said, smiling, as Connie sat down at their table for dinner on the last day. They were not eating in the hotel that night, but at a restaurant just along the lake.

It had been hot for two days now, in the mid-twenties, but the evenings were still cool in May and Connie had assumed they would eat inside. But while most of the group chose to, Dinah and Jared had brought their jackets – Dinah also wore a beautiful cashmere wrap, in delicate blues and greens – and were determined to brave the potential chill and eat al fresco on the restaurant’s terrace. The space, jutting out over the water, was covered with a wicker canopy and dotted with terracotta pots planted with lemon trees, their star-shaped white blossoms glowing in candlelight from the tables.

‘Isn’t it romantic?’ Dinah gave a long sigh as she gazed towards the coral sky and the setting sun throwing gold splinters across the lake. ‘I wish I were twenty again.’ Then she laughed. ‘Although, come to think of it, I was on the verge of marrying the ghastly Ambrose then. Such a brute. So maybe not.’

‘How could you tell, at twenty?’ Jared commented.

‘Exactly,’ Dinah agreed, then turned to Connie and laid a hand confidentially on her sleeve. ‘Do you have a family? You know all about us and we know absolutely nothing about you.’

Connie grinned. ‘I prefer to keep it that way.’

She saw Jared smiling too, but Dinah was not giving up. ‘A husband? Children?’

‘I have one daughter and a husband, Devan. He’s a doctor, a GP.’

‘Devon with an o, like the county?’ Dinah queried.

‘No, an a. He’s Irish, from Dublin originally, although he was brought up mainly in Scotland. His father worked as a golf professional in the Borders.’

‘Golf … Oh dear.’ Dinah’s face fell. ‘My second was a fanatical golfer. He practically lived at the club. When he wasn’t playing, he was drinking himself to death with his cronies in the clubhouse. Ghastly game. Poor you.’

Connie wondered how many husbands she’d had. She caught Jared’s eye and saw an amused smile playing around his mouth as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘The golfer was Connie’s father-in-law, Dinah. Her husband is a doctor,’ he said.

For a moment Dinah seemed confused. But she quickly recovered. ‘I’m not dotty,’ she said reprovingly, and turned to Connie. ‘So, tell me about Devan.’

‘Well, he’s recently retired –’