I need to be less abrasive, Stella thought with a sigh, though Mim thinks I’ve started to grow a few clucky feathers with the prospect of a grandchild. She felt the shiver of anticipation and unconsciously crossed her fingers that all would go well. Unlike Ava’s loss. Ava was twenty-five now. She should find someone decent before her life was gone, like Stella’s. But someone from here, not the city.

Stella disliked this business of looking fifty and feeling twenty inside. What had her mother said? ‘You’re drying up like a cow pat.’ She’d looked in the hall mirror after that and there had been those crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and fine lines around her mouth. Cow pat indeed.

‘Thanks, Mim,’ she said out loud as she slapped the corner fence post, and a puff of red dust rose and blew away as she walked back to her car. She’d been hearing that in her head all day today since her mother had spoken the words. And apparently, acting just a little irrational and emotional to go with it. That was Lorenzo’s fault. She couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t written until now, and if her refusal to visit had finally worn thin. He’s just a penfriend, she reminded herself.

The sound of an approaching vehicle from the usually deserted road drew her gaze, and a bottle-green Lexus turned in to their gate and slowed to a stop beside her. Unlike her own heart, which, after pausing in shock, did the opposite and began to increase until it pounded erratically.

Stella stared with disbelief at the tall, dark-haired man who climbed out and her breath came in a gasp as she blinked rapidly. It was the man himself – Lorenzo! Not one of those shimmering mirages that lived on the horizon during the summer. Her gaze roved his bulk from head to toe and focused on the blood-soaked bandage that was wrapped around his wrist.

She fixated on the injury almost with relief. Dealing with that was much easier than dealing with the shock wave of the man who held her thoughts arriving at her door. ‘What have you done? Show me.’

Her voice was gruff as she strode towards him, and she took his arm almost roughly as she tried to disguise the shaking that seemed to have overtaken her whole body. Ridiculously, her eyes stung with suppressed tears – How had he come? Why had he come? Now she’d have more of those foolish dreams – and she kept her head down so he wouldn’t see. But his big, warm hand on her shoulder stilled her.

‘Stella.’ The rolling a at the end as he said her name made her close her eyes. ‘Have you no welcome for me?’ She heard the touch of humour in his voice, but nothing was funny to Stella about this hallucination that might disappear in a moment.