‘No,’ I said, ‘it couldn’t. This isn’t real life.’

It certainly wasn’t my life.

‘But it could be,’ he said again.

I shook my head. If I had stuck to my guns and talked about Jonathan this afternoon then Beamish wouldn’t have been saying any of this. Knowing what I knew now, having seen the look in his eyes, he probably wouldn’t have been talking to me at all.

‘This isn’t my life,’ I told him, ‘it’s just a break until I . . .’

It was on the tip of my tongue to say until I was married to a man as yet unknown to him and we had moved halfway across the world, but Beamish was lowering his head. I ducked away just in time and heard him groan.

‘You were going to kiss me,’ I gasped.

‘No.’

‘Yes, you were.’

He scuffed the snow with the toe of his boot.

‘Well, so what if I was,’ he shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets, ‘you were going to kiss me first.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ I said sharply. ‘I told you that you’d got that wrong and besides, you said you wouldn’t have kissed me back because I was moving halfway around the world.’

‘Yeah, well.’

‘Yeah well, what?’ I snapped.

I knew I had no right to sound so affronted but I was feeling even worse about keeping quiet about Jonathan now. All the while I had thought the crush I had developed for Beamish was one-sided I could handle it. Yes, I felt bad for feeling something for another man but now I knew that other man felt something for me, I realised I wasn’t the only one at risk of being hurt and it made the situation so much worse.

‘Yeah well,’ Beamish carried on, ‘seeing you standing there with your cheeks glowing and your eyes shining and your hair all messed up, it made me—’

‘All right,’ I said, self-consciously running my hands through my hair, ‘I get the idea.’

I felt even worse that the version of me that Beamish had wanted to kiss didn’t really exist anymore. He didn’t know the real me. He was looking at the old version Dolly had been so keen to track down and who I would soon be banishing again.

‘Just out of curiosity,’ he asked, ‘if I had have kissed you, would you have kissed me back?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not.’

‘Because you’re moving halfway around the world or because you wouldn’t want to kiss me?’

Now it was my turn to kick up the snow. There were only so many fibs and half-truths I could get away with and I was fast approaching my limit.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘don’t answer that.’

I turned to walk away feeling grateful he hadn’t pushed me to reply.

‘I hope I haven’t ruined your day,’ he called after me.