‘Warsaw. Such a beautiful city. Did you know that they rebuilt a lot of the old structures after the war to precisely what they looked like before Hitler flattened the place?’ She went into tour-guide mode, to fend off the truth of what she’d been doing in Poland. ‘You’d never know the old town wasn’t exactly that, to look at it.’

‘Wow, hope I’ll get there one day … when Bash is a bit less challenging on the travel front, perhaps. What’s been going on, then, Mum? Any passengers getting up your nose?’

Connie cleared her throat. She had a persistent frog, as if her sins were choking her. ‘Not so far … I’ll tell you about Auschwitz when I see you. I want to hear about Bash.’ She changed the subject and for the next ten minutes her daughter filled her in on the minutiae of her grandson’s life. Caitlin’s words soothed her, her pulse dropping for the first time in twenty-four hours. Listening, she was reminded of the normal round of her life, where she was a mum and a grandmother, a wife and a member of a solid, supportive community, all of whom she loved. Another universe to the one she inhabited with Jared. I’ll tell him, she promised herself, as she ended the call to Caitlin. If he turns up tonight, I’ll tell him he can’t come in. But her promise rang false, even to her own ears.

Unlike before, in the G-plan hotel in Kraków, she made no attempt to resist, aware of nothing except his hand sliding softly up under her T-shirt and finding her naked breasts.

And also unlike before, this time Jared made love to her so slowly. He would not let her come. He teased her, tormented her, brought her close, then withdrew until she begged him. She thought she would literally die from pleasure. He was always in control and she found, to her surprise, that she liked it, enjoyed the agonizing way he was playing with her senses, caressing her body so that all her nerve endings were on fire. In the end she was gasping, half-conscious, the rippling surge through her body like nothing she had ever experienced before.

Afterwards he lay beside her in the darkness. The air in the room seemed to swirl and vibrate with their lovemaking. Her body tingled all over, her skin glowing from his touch. She closed her eyes, a wash of pleasure floating, like a fragrance, around her head. She felt his hand reach for hers and held it lazily, too dazed to move.