Even so, when Jeremy took the glass of warm, flat champagne from her hand to get her a fresh one, their fingers brushed, and the butterflies started to panic.

That brief touch tripped a secret alarm inside her, like a cashier pressing an under-the-desk button during a bank raid. Red lights flashed in the vault of her heart every few seconds. Sirens blared inside the confines of her skull as Jeremy pushed his way through the crowd back towards the kitchen.

Don’t care if he’s nice-looking, the alarm yelled. Even really nice-looking. He’s not Spencer.

Don’t care if he’s intelligent, sensitive and gently serious in a way that’s appealing, in a way Spencer never was. Don’t care that this Jeremy person might never crack a joke every time you tried to talk about something deep or important. He’s not him. Never will be.

Anna tried to ignore the nagging alarm when Jeremy returned. She tried to listen to an anecdote about a particularly demanding design client he’d had, but the pulsing warning was there in the back of her head as his gaze began to linger longer on hers, as a little bubble of intimacy began to close around them.

Oh, heck. She knew where this was going.

In less than half an hour, he might gently touch her arm while making a point. Maybe, when Big Ben’s chimes rang out across the nation, he’d lean in and kiss her softly on the lips. Her stomach plummeted at the thought. She felt hot and prickly all over.

Not Spencer, the warning flashed again. Not Spencer. Not Spencer. Not Spencer.

Anna tried to smile and nod as Jeremy kept talking, but she felt sick and giddy at the same time. This really wouldn’t do. She had to find a way to make it all stop.

But then Jeremy segued into a story about a stag do he’d been on, where he and his pals had spent an afternoon driving racing cars at Goodwood. Anna grabbed the lifeline he offered without hesitation.

‘I bought my husband one of those experience days for his birthday,’ she said. ‘Supercars… He was mad about Aston Martins.’

Jeremy opened his mouth to say, ‘Oh, really?’ but then her words caught up with him, and he faltered. He nodded a couple of times, a filler action, she guessed, designed to give him time to regroup. ‘Aston Martin?’ he finally said, his head still bobbing. ‘Good choice.’

He was momentarily stalled, she realized, but not shocked at the mention of a husband, as most men might have been if a woman at a party had been talking to them exclusively for more than an hour with no sign of a significant other.

‘Gabi told you about Spencer,’ she said. A statement, not a question.

‘A little,’ he replied, and she had to give him credit – he maintained eye contact, didn’t look away or do the invent-a-friend routine. Up until then, their conversation had been plain sailing, but he didn’t run when the waters got choppy. He stayed and navigated the lurching awkwardness that followed her revelation. The man had class.