It was a filthy night outside, with rain battering the town and the sea whipped into angry waves. The sky was far darker than it should have been on an early summer evening. She hated storms since the one that took Rob, and it was comforting to be in the pub, with the weather kept at bay behind closed doors, surrounded by chattering voices and protected from inevitable recollections of the night he died.

Angie was distracted though. She couldn’t help thinking of Tamsyn, worrying about her and the Davenports. She didn’t understand why they were so keen to have her hanging around all the time. And now this party? Tamsyn had erupted with such anger when Angie asked her about it and now she was even more convinced it was going to end in her daughter’s tears.

Tamsyn had struggled since her father’s death. She’d never really found her place and, though it was tough, Angie had been forced to accept her daughter was a loner. This fixation on the Davenports was unnatural and Angie worried she was opening herself up to being dreadfully hurt. She wished they’d stop with the champagne and the manicures and the bloody party invites.

The Davenports’ world wasn’t their world. People like them could only ever be temporary visitors and there would come a time when the Davenports would pull up the drawbridge and shut Tamsyn out. Yes, at the moment Tamsyn seemed happy, but Angie wished more than anything the family had rejected her at the beginning. Because when they eventually did – and they undoubtedly would – she was going to fall hard.

‘This is nice,’ said Gareth.

‘Sorry?’

‘Being in the pub. With you. Like this.’

‘It is,’ she said. Then she hesitated. ‘Your beer good?’

‘Spot on.’

She sipped her lager shandy.

‘Fancy some crisps?’

‘Yes please,’ she said, with forced enthusiasm. ‘That’d be lovely.’

He smiled at her and stood. Wiping his hand on his trousers, he reached into his pocket for his wallet and then crossed the pub to the bar.

Angie had known Gareth so long he was like a brother. He’d been in the same class as she and Rob at Cape Cornwall School. Rob and he had even been friends, until they got to secondary school and Rob became football captain and Gareth started working evenings and weekends at his father’s chip shop.

She smiled self-consciously at him as he sat back down and put two packets of Salt ’n’ Shake on the table.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Angie—’ He hesitated.

She reached for a packet of crisps and pulled it apart, then fished out the little blue envelope of salt and tore off the corner.

‘I’ve got something important I want to tell you.’

Her heart missed a beat.

No, things are fine as they are. Please don’t say anything important.

But Gareth couldn’t hear her thoughts.

‘I care about you, Angie.’