Finch huffed and puffed as he ran up the path through the woods towards Harting Down. Normally the route posed no problem, but this morning – a gorgeously bright-blue June day – his legs felt heavy and his lungs tight. Maybe the tension about Romy, stuck in that bloody flat with Michael, was making his body malfunction. He needed to be fit for the Irish marathon he was planning in the autumn. But somehow his previously pressing need, which Grace called ‘compulsive’, to run these gruelling distances – to prove himself again and again – had dwindled somewhat since meeting Romy.

He stopped as he reached the top of the hill and took a long, thirsty swig from the water bottle he carried on a belt round his waist, enchanted, as he always was, by the sweeping vista across the Downs. He could see for miles, the air so clear it was almost intoxicating, the soft greens and greys of early summer picked out by the spiky yellow of gorse. He pulled out his phone from the belt and took a photo, sending it to Romy with the caption: Come with me next time? x

The view always reminded him of training exercises in the Welsh mountains when he was in the army. But then he’d had to carry a massive thirty-kilo pack on his back. As he moved off along the crest of the hill, he adopted a gentler pace, his thoughts returning to Romy.

They’d had such a great night together after the dim sum. They jokingly called his club their ‘love-nest’, but it seemed to have become that for them – a place that was unconnected to their everyday lives, or their pasts, where Finch felt they could shut out the world and, for a few short hours, no one else existed.

It was the very unreality of their lovemaking that worried him, though. He didn’t want to meet Romy for occasional sex, then watch her return to Michael. It was as if they were having an affair. The ‘couple of weeks’ she’d originally talked about had constantly been added to, and she was showing no signs of breaking free. From what she told him, she could easily step back, take on a monitoring role from a distance. Why doesn’t she leave? he asked himself as he ran, hearing the bare resentment in his question.

He remembered her enthusiasm, when they’d first met, for the new start she was embarking on – before she’d even considered he might become part of that. Would she give up on those dreams, go back to a life that clearly hadn’t made her happy? he wondered. But he had to face the fact – despite feeling that he and Romy were so good together – that the more time she spent with Michael, the closer they might potentially become. All those decades of marriage …