Brody was so relieved at the thought he was still going to have Anna all to himself that he said, almost absent-mindedly, ‘Oh, yes?’

‘I’m going to ask Jeremy if he’d like to have dinner with me.’

Brody recoiled from her words as he would from a punch. ‘Uh…’ was all he managed to say. He hadn’t been expecting that. She’d hardly mentioned the guy in the last couple of months; he’d been lulled into a false sense of security.

Her voice wavered. ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea?’

No, he bloody well didn’t think it was a good idea! But he wasn’t going to tell Anna that, he realized almost instantly. How could he? Why would he? What was he going to say: give Mr Slick the elbow and have dinner with me instead? Especially with everything he’d just been about to reveal to her.

‘Brody…?’

She was waiting for his answer, yet he couldn’t say what he wanted to say. He didn’t need a million reasons why he couldn’t ask her to dinner. Five were enough.

Firstly, they lived hundreds of miles apart. Secondly and thirdly, he didn’t know her full name or her address, but those were tiny hurdles compared to the fourth reason: even if he knew these things, it wouldn’t do him any good. What was he going to do? Travel to London on a packed train, meet her in a café or a swish restaurant? How exactly would that go?

And if that wasn’t enough, the last reason knocked the rest down like a bowling ball hitting wooden pins. He’d be a ball and chain around this amazing woman’s leg. Instead of letting her reach her full potential, he’d drag her back into the shadowy valley of guilt and grief with him, back into everything she was escaping from. He couldn’t do that to her.

He cleared his throat and answered her. ‘No.’

‘No, you don’t think I should ask him?’

‘I meant, “No, it’s not a bad idea”.’ He paused briefly, caught off guard by the tightening in his chest. ‘I think you should ask him. Go for it.’

He could tell a smile was blooming on her face as she exhaled softly. It only made the crushing sensation around his ribcage worse.

‘Okay, then,’ she said, sounding more certain. Sounding happy.

Brody wanted to punch something.

‘I’ll tell you how it goes – if I work up the courage!’ she added.

He kicked an exposed root with his boot, then closed his eyes and let his head fall back. ‘You do that.’

Chapter Thirty

ANNA SAT AT the table of a nice little Italian restaurant, knotting and unknotting a thick linen napkin as she watched the large clock behind the bar. She’d got here deliberately early, knowing she’d need some time to centre herself before Jeremy arrived. Not for the first time that evening, she made herself breathe out slowly.

La Cucina wasn’t in the town centre. That had felt too public – which was ridiculous, seeing as a restaurant, by definition, is a public space – so she’d chosen a small, family-run establishment in the middle of a little parade of shops in a residential area.