In the long dark hours of the night, Connie had attempted to analyse the kiss. Over the years, there had been the occasional passenger who’d tried it on with her. Just a mild flirtation – unsuccessful in every case – and harmless, occasioning the odd raised eyebrow from an irritated wife. On an Edinburgh tour to see the Tattoo, a burly Mancunian called Roy – who’d been putting it away, but was not so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing – had come up behind her, pinned her to the hotel bar and attempted to kiss her. Connie, horrified, had used the wooden bar as leverage and shoved him violently off, sending the man flying into a table and landing in an ignominious heap on the patterned carpet. His wife long since in bed, another man in the group had helped him to his feet and carried him off upstairs.

Roy had made a complaint about Connie, saying she was lazy and unhelpful. But Connie had got in first, immediately reporting the incident to her boss at the company, who knew beyond question that the adjectives ‘lazy’ and ‘unhelpful’ could never in a million years be applied to Connie McCabe. Roy was put on the banned list thereafter.

It was different with Jared. It had never even crossed her mind that he found her attractive. Why on earth would he? Connie had been told she looked good for her age, but there it was, her age. She was probably ten years older than he. As she thought back over their interactions during the week, though, she did accept that, after the first awkwardness, she’d begun to enjoy his company and find him amusing … sympathetic to chat to. They had bonded over Dinah, mostly. But also everything Italian and travel in general. It was good to talk to someone who shared her passion – Devan saw Italy as a rival, not a conversation.

But a kiss? And not just a random kiss: one that had set her body buzzing. She had been entirely faithful for the thirty-three years of their marriage, had never even been close to kissing another man, not once. Which was no hardship, just an unconscious faith in the love she bore for Devan. Sometimes, inevitably, she met men she found attractive, but she and Devan would joke about it, just as they did about women who caught his eye. She would not be joking about Jared.