Toby wasn’t quite looking at her as he handed Rachel a mug. She stood by the window, but he backed away and leaned against one of the worktops, as if deliberately keeping some space between them.

‘It was nothing,’ he said quietly.

‘Toby,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t nothing. It must have been a lot of work. You went to so much effort.’

He smiled, but still wasn’t looking at her. ‘It’s what I do. I’d have done it for anyone.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But this time you did it for me.’

‘I didn’t want it hanging over you.’

She smiled. ‘And now it won’t.’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘It won’t.’

‘Are you all right?’ Rachel asked, confused by his reticence, which was so at odds with her own sheer relief. ‘Has something else happened? You seem… I don’t know. Pensive.’

Toby looked away. ‘I think I’m going to go back to London in the next day or so.’

Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been that. Her heart gave a strange and painful pulse. ‘Oh. I thought you had at least another month on the lease for this place?’

‘I do, but… I’ve decided that trying to write this memoir is a fool’s errand. It’s just not me. I need to find some other form of work. And in fact,’ he shifted uncomfortably, ‘the work I did on the Dora McCreedy investigation has unexpectedly opened a couple of doors.’

‘Oh?’

‘One of the papers has offered me a contributing editor position.’

‘Right. Well – that’s good. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

There was a moment of silence. ‘You don’t… Toby, if you don’t mind me saying so… you don’t seem particularly happy about going.’

He looked at her, right at her, for the first time since they’d started their conversation. ‘I’m not. I like it here. A lot.’

‘And we like having you here,’ Rachel said, and for a moment thought about saying more. But still, all she said was, ‘Gilly will miss her lessons with you.’

‘I’ll still do those,’ he said. ‘We can do them online. I’m not going to just drop her.’

‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘Of course not. I know you wouldn’t.’

The silence was deeper this time, sharper, a chasm that she didn’t understand.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could have dinner. Before you go?’

He smiled again, a slightly more genuine one this time. ‘Sure. I want to say a proper goodbye to everyone. And you deserve to walk into the Fretted Goose with your chin held high.’

‘No,’ Rachel said, her heart beating to an uncomfortable rhythm. ‘I meant we could have dinner. You and me.’ She had no idea how to say, A date, Toby, I’m talking about a date, but I don’t know how to ask.

He stared at her for a second as if he’d heard her unspoken thought, and then shut his eyes, a frown creasing lines in his forehead.

‘Rachel,’ he said, with slow deliberation, ‘there’s something I have to tell you.’