I wasn’t sure what he meant by that and didn’t try to fathom it out as I succumbed to a long and lingering kiss. I was deep in shock and my head was all over the place so I assumed that was why the kiss didn’t elicit the knee-weakening, butterfly-awakening feelings I usually experienced when he swept me into his arms.

‘You weren’t really just going out, were you?’ he throatily asked, sounding a little breathless and thankfully unaware of my somewhat passionless response to our reunion.

I wished I felt as seduced as he sounded, but then I supposed I’d come back to life in a minute.

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of the market square and my promise to help with the teas. ‘I was heading into town.’

‘What, like that?’ Jonathan asked, letting me go and taking in my hair, face and clothes in one disparaging look up and down.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, unbuttoning his jacket. ‘That probably didn’t come out right.’

There was no probably about it.

‘It’s just that you don’t really look like you, Hattie, that’s all.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked, looking down at my multiple layers of wind-defying clothes.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re usually so smart. You never leave the flat, not even to buy milk, unless you’ve done your hair and make-up.’

So, it wasn’t my well-padded figure he was referring to, but my face. I should have been offended, but having so recently decided that all the effort I used to put into getting done up to go out had been a waste of time, I knew he wasn’t aware of my change of heart and shrugged his comment off. Now I would rather save the contents of my make-up bag for special occasions, as opposed to trips to Tesco Metro, but of course Jonathan hadn’t been brought up to speed about that yet.

‘I’m wearing lip gloss,’ I pointed out.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not criticising.’

His tone suggested he was.

‘What are you doing then?’ I remarked.

I suppose his surprise was only to be expected. The version of me standing in front of him, wasn’t the one he was familiar with at all and given his preoccupation with style, labels and how he wanted the world to see him, us really, I supposed it was a bit of a wonder to find me on my way out looking like I’d made zero effort at all.

‘Shall we start again?’ he suggested. ‘Unless you really are in a rush to get off somewhere?’

‘I was,’ I told him, taking off my coat again. ‘But I’m not now.’