‘That’s another popular place,’ I smiled.

‘Indeed,’ she agreed, setting out the cutlery. ‘Did you get to meet any of Beamish’s rugby buddies? They’re quite a crowd.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not last night. It was just the two of us but it was lovely nonetheless,’ I continued, thinking of the earlier part of the evening. ‘I can’t remember the last time I spent so long talking about myself.’

‘I daresay living with someone like Jonathan you don’t get the chance to all that often.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Just that half the time he’s too keen on his own voice and opinions to let anyone else express theirs,’ she said with a wry smile.

Had she not finished her sentence with a smile, I would have assumed she was being a bit mean.

‘He just has a lot to say, that’s all.’

‘Indeed,’ Dolly sighed. ‘I was on the receiving end of his runaway mouth last night.’

‘What?’ I gasped, dropping the butter knife on to the flagged floor where it landed noisily and of course, butter side down.

‘He called here,’ said Dolly, ‘not long after you and Beamish had left for the pub.’

Suddenly, I didn’t much fancy the toast I was buttering. I swallowed down the bile which shifted as I bent to retrieve the knife and set it to one side before getting another one.

‘Did he want to speak to me?’

‘Well of course, he wanted to speak to you,’ Dolly chuckled.

It wasn’t like him to ring the house phone.

‘But he wanted to speak to me too,’ she added. ‘He wanted to know if I liked the hamper. He said the biscuits were a particular favourite of his and that the coffee was his preferred blend.’

It all sounded innocuous enough I supposed, even if it was devoid of any of their usual sparring.

‘I told him I hadn’t tried the coffee yet because I haven’t got a cafetière thingy and he’s promised to send me one of those as well. I wasn’t quite sure what had gotten into him, to be honest. He couldn’t have been more amenable and was in no rush to let me go.’

Ordinarily I would have been absolutely thrilled to hear the pair had been getting along, but I was more concerned about how Dolly had explained my absence.

‘Where did you say I was?’ I croaked, keeping my eyes on my buttering and ignoring the heat prickling the back of my neck. ‘Did he say he’d tried my mobile?’

Because of the lack of consistent signal, I hadn’t bothered to keep it turned on.

‘He said he was sick of not being able to reach you on it, so that was why he’d rung the house instead and,’ she paused, ‘I told him you were already in bed.’