But Anna couldn’t let that make a difference, so she launched into the story of what happened two years, nine months and eight days ago: how her husband had gone out one evening to the corner shop to buy a bottle of wine. How he’d never returned because someone else had drunk too much wine the very same evening, and then that person had got behind the wheel of a car. It had only been a three-minute walk to the shop.

She’d told Jeremy how she’d heard the sirens as the ambulance arrived and how she’d just known that something was very, very wrong. How she’d left the front door open and had run out of the house in her bare feet, even though it had been March. How she’d seen Spencer lying in the road, surrounded by paramedics. How their faces had been white. Grim. How he’d been pronounced ‘dead on arrival’ when the ambulance had made it to the hospital.

She told Jeremy every last detail while he watched her, not horrified or embarrassed, but with compassion in his eyes. True compassion, not pity.

And that was why Anna made sure every word was a brick, and that she built each brick into a wall. A boundary line. And when she had finished her tale, she was on one side, and Jeremy was on the other.

Still he didn’t turn tail. Damn him.

‘About the salsa lessons…’ he began. ‘I get the feeling they’re more Gabi’s idea.’

‘They are,’ she said simply. Truthfully.

He nodded, understanding there would be no salsa-ing for the two of them any time soon. Probably not ever.

‘It was nice meeting you, Anna,’ he said gently, looking her straight in the eye. Not in a romantic way (she’d definitely squashed that vibe) but in an honest way, letting her know he really meant it.

Anna nodded in reply and swallowed down the stray words forming in her throat, afraid they might form a request for him to stay, to keep talking to her as if she was a human being and not a walking tragedy that needed gentle handling.

He glanced towards the house. ‘There’s someone I need to…’ He didn’t finish the sentence but gave her a rueful smile before turning and walking back indoors. Anna watched the back of his head appearing and disappearing as he made his way through the crowded kitchen.

He’d fallen back on the old invisible friend routine after all, but far from hating him for it, she was grateful. He’d done it to save her any further discomfort, not himself. Jeremy had seen her bricks, he’d seen her wall, and he’d respected them. Tears sprang to her eyes.

She was still standing there, staring blurrily through the vast folding glass doors into the house, when Gabi bounded up. ‘Where’s Jeremy?’

Anna was pretty sure her friend was here asking her this question because she’d spotted him back inside the house on his own. ‘He had someone he needed to talk to,’ she said, and ignored the flicker of warmth at the idea of being connected to him through this little white lie, a secret just between the two of them. She turned to face the lawn and stared out into the darkness.