‘Well this looks good,’ said Beamish, picking up his knife and fork. ‘Just what I need.’

I drew my spoon through the love heart decorating the top of my latte and waited until my own heart had stopped skittering quite so much. If Beamish had felt anything when we touched, he certainly wasn’t letting on. I decided not to dwell on it and moved the conversation on.

‘Do you think you’ll ever leave Wynbridge?’ I asked. ‘I mean, you don’t need a degree to be a school caretaker and Christmas illuminations expert so I’m guessing you once had a very different life to the one you’re living now.’

‘Oh, I did,’ he said. ‘I was an architect working in a busy London firm so it was, as you say, completely different, but I don’t miss it in the least and no, I’ll never leave. Not for more than a couple of weeks anyway. I only wish . . .’

His words trailed off.

‘What? What do you wish?’

‘I wish I’d spent more time here before I lost my parents,’ he said sadly, ‘but there was always something to stop me coming back. I kept telling myself I’d wait until the next big project was finished, but then there’d be another one, more impressive and with a tighter deadline than the last. In the end, my time ran out. We always think we have enough of the stuff but we don’t and what we do have we often take for granted and end up wasting.’

‘You’re probably right,’ I said, snapping a leg off my gingerbread man.

‘I know I’m right,’ he said, looking straight at me, ‘and I know this is none of my business, but Dolly mentioned that you don’t talk to your parents.’

I sat back in my seat. Ever since he’d told me what had happened to bring him back to his hometown, I’d been thinking about Dolly’s addition to the Wish List; that she wanted me to get in touch with Mum and Dad.

‘She’s right,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

‘Then you should,’ he said. His voice was firm but tender. ‘Don’t be too proud to be the one to make the first move, Hattie. Make the most of the little time you have left to see them before you board that plane.’

‘You make it sound so simple,’ I said huskily, ‘but it’s anything but. They broke my heart, you see. They interfered in my life and I ended up losing something very precious as a result.’

I don’t know why I told him that, but I was grateful that he didn’t ask what it was.

‘Were you very young?’

I wasn’t sure if he was guessing or if Dolly had told him more than she should.

‘Does that matter?’