She kept her eyes focused on the crisps as she tipped the salt into the bag. He reached over and stilled her hand.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ he asked softly.

She looked up at him and took a deep breath. This wasn’t what she needed. All she wanted was a drink in the pub and a few hours away from it all.

‘I fell in love with you when we were nine years old.’

‘Don’t, Gareth—’

‘No,’ he said firmly, raising his hand like a traffic policeman. ‘Let me finish. You were in my thoughts all the time. Got my heart broke fair in two at the Penzance Social when I saw you dancing with Robbie Tresize and the look on your face.’

She had a vivid flash of that night. June 1963. They were fifteen. She remembered it like it was yesterday. Ned Miller playing ‘From a Jack to a King’. Rob Tresize, best-looking boy in Cornwall, if not the country, chin resting on her head, hands in the small of her back, body pressed against hers, her heart beating so hard it threatened to tear right out of her chest into his.

‘And I don’t mind telling you, I cried the day I got your wedding invite. Turned it down. Told you I had to visit a poorly aunt in Plymouth.’ He smiled then. ‘I never had an aunt in Plymouth. Let alone a poorly one. Couldn’t face seeing you marry him, see? I hated him and it burnt like a furnace in me.’

Angie opened her mouth to speak but Gareth ploughed on.

‘I’d never wish death on anybody. Can’t say I was as upset as everybody else, but I don’t mind admitting I did get choked up.’

Angie recalled the squall of grief which had torn through the county from Redruth to Land’s End. People united in mourning her man. Newspapers, church services, schools, everyone talking about the night Robert Tresize went down on the Bess Sellen. His bravery, his sacrifice, their loss.

Gareth had been there for her from that first moment. Knocking on the door with a beef stew or fish pie he’d cooked himself. Flowers. Chocolates, even. But she hadn’t been able to see him. Didn’t want to talk to anybody. Didn’t want to hear any words designed to make her feel better. As if she could ever ‘feel better’.

‘All I wanted to do was take care of you, Angie.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been so good to us.’

She recalled sitting in the living room, hearing Granfer open the door to him.

I thought some company might cheer her up?

I don’t think so, lad. Doubt much could cheer her, save you bringing our boy back.

Will you give her these peonies? And say I’m here if she needs me.