Romy didn’t answer until she had placed the cheese and fruit on the table and sat down again. She knew she had to give him some kind of response, but she found she couldn’t meet his eye as she eventually spoke. ‘We were married such a long time. I think we just ran out of steam. Michael is a barrister. His first love has always been his work.’ She didn’t want to lie to Finch, but her deliberately evasive reply was playing with the truth.

Finch nodded, but she could tell he had noticed her equivocation from the puzzlement she saw flash across his eyes. ‘Must have been a difficult decision.’

‘I didn’t feel I had a choice,’ she said, contradicting her previous statement, but realizing, for the first time, that this was probably true. The actual moment of leaving had been almost an anticlimax, as if she’d just wandered off to the cottage and could, at any time, wander straight back to Michael. It was certainly how her husband saw it – or, at least, he had, until he’d requested a divorce the other day. But it was, in truth, more defined than that: she had reached a tipping point, the letter changing everything.

‘How about you? It can’t have been easy since you lost your wife,’ she asked, hoping her question wouldn’t feel too intrusive. Finch’s wife had died before Romy was living full-time in the village. She vaguely remembered a pretty, gamine blonde – sort of Mia Farrow-ish, with a wide, slightly crazy smile.

‘Not easy at all. You’re right. It’s quite hard to describe it,’ Finch began, looking away. Romy saw his mouth working. Then he turned to her, the gaze from his expressive brown eyes seeming to hold hers with almost fierce determination. She guessed he didn’t talk about Nell’s death to many people and she felt honoured that he should trust her. ‘Nothing is what you expect. It’s like you’re standing on the edge of a deep, dark pit and constantly having to stop yourself falling in. But gradually you get better and better at negotiating the edge.’ He gave her a self-conscious smile. ‘I’m sure that makes no sense to you.’

Romy smiled her understanding, because oddly, although it wasn’t a death for her, Finch’s analogy rang a powerful bell. She dared not show this too readily, though, for fear he would ask more questions. But it pained her that she couldn’t be equally open with this sensitive, empathic man.

‘At first I kept judging myself for not recovering quickly enough. A pull-yourself-together type of thing,’ Finch was saying. ‘Now I just feel what I feel.’ He smiled. ‘But I’m getting there. I think I can see ahead in a way that was impossible till recently.’

Like me, Romy thought. But she wondered whether, also like her, Finch was ready for anything more than friendship.