But despite her unwillingness to talk about Michael, she found she could not so easily banish him from her thoughts even as she and Finch were chatting. The previous night he had rung the bell, as usual, at about one thirty. Since the night when she’d been so disturbed by his anxiety about Anezka and that strange dream, she’d been wary of sitting with him too long. She’d taken to going straight back to bed as soon as she’d sorted out what was bothering him. But last night he’d begged her to stay for a bit and she couldn’t refuse.

‘What is it, Michael?’

He was smiling, seemed almost playful as he began to ramble on in his halting speech. ‘I’ve been lying here remembering. That night at the Metropole … we were only kids … well, barely more than kids.’

The warehouse-like bulk of the Stockton pub rose instantly to her mind. In those days there were pubs you went to and others you didn’t, depending on alliances that were innate and almost tribal. The Metropole was her stamping ground. And his.

‘You bought me and my friends vodkas and lime and they cost a fortune. I’ll never forget.’

He grinned. ‘I must have been trying to impress you, but you weren’t impressed at all. You called me a pillock because I didn’t know who Steely Dan was.’

She couldn’t help smiling back. ‘I wouldn’t have dared. You were older than me and scarily cool back then.’

Michael chuckled quietly. ‘God, you were magnificent, Romy. Tall and wild, those eyes of yours on fire. You weren’t even remotely scared of me.’

He was right. She’d seen him as a challenge. Her friends all thought he was up himself – arrogant and superior – and she tended to agree. But she’d noticed something softer in those dark eyes – and, anyway, she fancied the pants off him, with his lean frame and intense stare, black hair brushing the collar of his denim jacket. ‘You made me weak at the knees.’ She laughed.

They both fell silent. Romy was remembering the sweeping rush of exhilaration as they’d walked away from the pub and their friends, hand in hand in the summer night, down the high street and over the bridge. She had literally felt she could fly. And fly she did, later, when Michael made love to her – quickly, urgently – in the back of his brother’s worn-out Vauxhall, parked in a lane on the outskirts of the village.

When her thoughts returned to the bedroom, and Michael lying in the bed beside her, he was speaking again, his voice cracked and dull. ‘I’m such an old crock, Romy. Who will want me now?’ And Romy hadn’t known how to reply.

Now, she realized Finch was talking. ‘You’re miles away,’ he said, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight. ‘What were you thinking?’