Before he could answer, Nelson appeared, alerted by a familiar voice. The cat wound himself round Tony’s legs, sinuously shedding black hairs all over his blue jeans. Tony immediately dropped into a crouch to scratch the cat between the ears. ‘Hello, Nelson. You’re looking handsome as ever.’ Nelson purred, narrowing his eyes and watching Carol as if to say he could teach her a thing or two. Tony looked up. ‘I flew down on the shuttle from Edinburgh this morning. I don’t have any teaching commitments today, so I thought I’d take a chance on catching you at home.’

‘An expensive chance,’ Carol said. ‘You could just have phoned, made sure I’d be home.’

Tony stood up. ‘Sometimes I get fed up with being prosaic’

Before she could stop herself, Carol said, ‘And what does Frances think about that?’ As soon as her words landed, they altered the landscape of his face. It was as if a physical shutter had closed down behind his eyes.

‘What I do is no longer any concern of Frances,’ he said. His tone of voice deflected discussion as effectively as armour plating.

Carol couldn’t help a squirm of delight in her stomach. It couldn’t be coincidence that Frances had been consigned to history so soon after her visit. Which meant… all sorts of things she couldn’t begin to permit herself to consider. It should be enough that he was here now, with her; his choice, not her request. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘Coffee, yes?’

‘Oh, please. They can map the human genome, but they still can’t make a decent cup of coffee on a plane.’

‘Make yourself at home,’ Carol said, gesturing towards the twin sofas that sat at right angles, making the most of her view. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She headed for the kitchen.

Rather than settling down, Tony roamed the room. Much of the contents were familiar, but some were new. There were a couple of large Jack Vettriano prints from his film noir series in heavy distressed gilt frames that would have been totally out of place in the cottage where Carol had been living previously but which looked strong and moody on these high white walls. The CD collection had expanded to include a tranche of contemporary guitar bands whose names he recognized but whose music was completely alien to him. He’d never seen the brightly coloured gabbeh that dominated the centre of the room either.

But there was nothing that didn’t chime with his understanding of Carol. She was still the person he knew. He stood at the window and gazed down at the old church, incongruous among the modernity of its surroundings. He wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing, coming here like this. Sometimes, however, risks had to be taken. Otherwise, how would he know he was alive?