She bends, looks back into the car. ‘Good luck with your book,’ she says. She needs to get away from him, slams the door, heads towards the house.

‘Wait up, Alice.’ He’s out of the car too. Within moments, he’s pulling her to him; she doesn’t resist. His lips brush against hers. She loves this man. She always has. And tonight she’s going to allow herself to be loved.

‘I’ve missed you, Alice,’ he says.

*

The next morning Leon lies beside her, face wedged in the pillow, his tanned muscular back rising and falling as he sleeps. One arm dangles over the edge of the bed; the other stretches above his head, as though swimming through his dreams.

She throws back the patchwork quilt and pulls herself upright. This was her bedroom growing up, and she loves every square inch of it.

She swings her legs round, slips her feet into her slippers and pads towards the window. Behind the curtains a charcoal-grey sky threatens over Whitby Abbey, the early morning mist surrounding the black tombstones.

Her breath catches at the sight of the Gothic ruins overlooking the sea that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.

Leon stirs, and, not wanting to talk right now, Alice leaves the room.

In the shower, soapy water strips away the smell of him from her skin. She has no regrets, but knows they are still miles away from each other with what they want from life – what they want from the future.

Downstairs, Henry plods across the kitchen towards her, tail wagging in a greeting.

‘Hello, lovely boy.’ She crouches down to snuggle him for a few moments, before opening the back door to let him out.

She plugs in her phone to charge, and once she’s made some coffee, she picks up her mug and steps outside into the cool air. ‘Henry?’ she calls, her eyes flicking over the untidy garden. ‘Where are you?’

He appears, a stick in his mouth, and runs towards her, clearly hoping she’ll throw it for him. She prises it from his mouth, and lobs the stick. The dog bounds across the mass of weeds. She used to keep the garden reasonable in her teens, but when she moved out, her father let it go.

‘I don’t want a gardener,’ her father said, when she suggested the idea. ‘I don’t like people.’ It always made her smile when he came out with such harsh words. He was an amazing man and people would have loved him, if he’d only let them in.

Henry appears to have lost interest in the stick, and is now sniffing along the back fence. Alice turns and heads back into the kitchen, where she fires up her laptop, and picks up her phone, now ten per cent charged. There’s a WhatsApp message from Faith: