‘No.’ Liam looked her in the eye. ‘But the thing is, I kind of… met someone.’

She watched him. ‘On the dive?’

He nodded, shifting uncomfortably. His gaze flicked away from hers again, endlessly seeking the ocean. Perhaps it represented escape, to him: a passage away from whatever dogged him on land and that could not follow him to sea.

‘Look,’ Liam said quietly. ‘I’d like to… see her. You and I always said that we’d be casual, didn’t we? And we never agreed to be exclusive. I really like you, Anna, we have a lot of fun and I don’t want to stop seeing you. But I know the guy you were with before was a cheater, and I don’t want you to feel that’s what I’m doing to you by seeing this girl as well. So… I thought honesty would be the best policy. Before… well. You know.’

Anna laughed at that. ‘Yeah. I know.’

Liam sighed. ‘I don’t want to be a rat. You deserve better than that. And maybe if we were both going to stay here permanently… things might be different? But the rest of our lives are somewhere else, so…’ He shrugged, cutting himself off.

‘We have had fun,’ Anna agreed. ‘And we both knew it was going to end sooner or later.’

‘It doesn’t have to end,’ Liam pointed out. ‘Not yet. We can carry on exactly as we have been until I go home, or until you leave yourself, whichever comes first. I just – didn’t want you to find out from someone else and be upset by it, that’s all. People around here—’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Well. You already know what they can be like.’

Anna smiled. She looked at the coffee eddying in her mug for a moment, contemplating. It wasn’t that she’d expected Liam to be exclusive. But she couldn’t help thinking that from now on, if they did carry on as they had been, she’d find herself wondering where Liam was when he wasn’t with her, what he was doing and with whom. She had a feeling it would be easy to get caught in that mental eddy again, being sucked down into a whirlpool of hurt that would have nothing to do with this relationship and far more to do with the fact that really, she was still recovering from the harm Geoff had caused her over the years. Her time with Liam had been good – great, even – and so far he’d shown her more respect than Geoff ever had. That’s how she wanted to remember him.

She reached over and squeezed Liam’s fingers. He turned his hand over so that he could grasp hers.