‘Nothing,’ she said, hastily turning her attention back to her crackers and cheese.

I stirred my tea.

‘As Beamish has come up in conversation,’ I ventured after a few seconds had passed.

‘Yes,’ said Dolly quickly.

‘I was wondering if you might have mentioned to him, who I went off with yesterday. I thought you might have told him about Jonathan.’

‘Did you?’ She nodded. ‘Well I had been thinking about it, but something came up.’

She didn’t say what.

‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned him to anyone yourself. Why haven’t you?’

I thought back to the Christmas switch-on and what Rose had told me about how Dolly had explained what had prompted me to cut my last visit short.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I was going to, but Rose happened to mention that you’d told everyone that I’d had to rush back to work at the hotel after my last visit. You didn’t tell them that I’d gone back to the guy with the bad temper even though they knew I’d arrived in town as a result of a row with him.’

Dolly shifted in her seat.

‘You mean the guy who used to have a bad temper?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, the guy who used to have a bad temper.’

Picking up on my incorrect tense had enabled Dolly to momentarily sidestep the point I was trying to make.

‘Did you think I’d made a mistake, Dolly?’ I asked, going for the direct approach. ‘In going back to Jonathan? Is that why you told everyone I’d had to go back to work at short notice?’

‘I confess, at the time, I was concerned,’ she admitted. ‘I thought it was only a matter of time before something happened again and you came back. I thought keeping quiet might save you some awkward explanations in the long run.’

She sounded embarrassed to tell me the truth.

‘Why didn’t you say any of this at the time?’

‘Because I was afraid that we might quarrel about it,’ she explained. ‘You had already cut your parents out of your life and I didn’t want us to end up like that too.’

I could understand why that would have held her back.

‘That said,’ she added, ‘I’m delighted to have been proved wrong and that everything has worked out.’

There was definitely no way I could tell her anything about the morning’s drama now.

‘However,’ she carried on, ‘I do think you need to tell Beamish that you aren’t heading to Abu Dhabi on your own. I know everyone is aware that you’re here to spend time with me before you go but I think it’s only fair that you explain the situation properly, to him at least.’