For a while, he was buoyed up by action and the drama of his broken heart. But as the evening wore on and he trawled the endless multitude of travel options online, his head began to spin, his eyes to burn and the wine he’d drunk turn to acid in his empty stomach. Finch no longer felt intrepid, just bewildered and alone.

That night he woke with a start. It was a familiar flashback. At one time, back in the nineties, he’d experienced it on a regular basis. But now it seemed only to trouble him when he was under stress and vulnerable – like when Nell was dying.

The incident had occurred in Bosnia. Finch and his team were behind the lines. It was high summer and roasting hot. A black jeep pulled up in a cloud of choking dust and three fighters jumped out. All carried guns, the leader – dressed in black, his eyes cold and dead from too much anger, too much violence – brandished a vintage Winchester rifle, which Finch immediately identified. Finch and his men were there to negotiate – ‘with the minimum use of force’, went the orders. But the dead-eyed Bosnian Serb had other ideas.

None of these details are in the flashback. It is just a brief flare of dusty hotness, the man’s haunted eyes and the pain of the cold, hard barrel of the Winchester being pressed into Finch’s cheek. He knows he is going to die and the moment is freeze-framed for what seems like eternity … Then he wakes with a thudding heart, drenched with the sweat of relief.

When he occasionally told the story to people who had not been in similar situations, they would gasp and say how terrifying it must have been. But he did not recall fear, only his brain splitting in two. While the front half frantically sought a solution – which eventually resulted in the man being disarmed – the back half remained eerily calm. His thoughts were focused solely on the people he loved and how much they meant to him.

He saw the moment – however horrific at the time – as a valued part of his life experience, but he had no control over his dreams.

Finch turned over in bed. It was just past the summer solstice and the sky was already paler in the east – although it was not yet four o’clock. He got the odd feeling sometimes that the flashback was the universe’s way of nudging him, reminding him that the only really important things in life were love and family. But tonight he felt aggrieved by the reminder. I love Romy Claire, he whispered silently, to the pale sky outside the open window. But I love Gracie too.

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