“I have to confess,” he said slowly, “that I find you very attractive indeed.”

She stared at him, frozen in fright. Her hair, was all that she could think; her glorious, missing, irreplaceable hair.

“Oh,” was the best she could say, after a moment.

“You’re incredibly pretty,” he said. “But you’re not just pretty, you’re also sort of wonderfully familiar somehow. I’m a bit, well, kind of eccentric, as I’m sure Freddie’s told you, and I promise you I’ve never said this to anyone else before, but as soon as we started talking, I felt as if I’d known you for years and years and years. You make me laugh, and I think I make you laugh, too; we seem to look at the world in the same way, and I have the feeling that, if we let it, something really, really special and wonderful and magical could start to happen between us.”

He stopped and looked directly at her. He was so handsome, she thought miserably, he was so impossibly, so terrifyingly handsome.

“And can I tell you something else?” he asked.

Rigid with dismay, she could only nod.

He leaned towards her, confidentially, across the table.

“I’m scared out of my wits,” he said.

And suddenly, beautifully, it all became possible.

“You are?” she said. She, too, leaned forward, and, unconsciously, grasped his wrist. “Me, too,” she said. “I’m terrified.”

“Horrified,” he said.

“Petrified,” she agreed. “It’s awful.”

“Terrible,” he said.

“Hideous,” she said.

There was a pause.

“But don’t you think it’s also sort of a little bit nice, too, at the same time?” he asked then, a little hopefully.

“No,” she told him firmly. She released his wrist and tapped a finger on it reprovingly. “It’s unalloyedly horrible.”

“Sorry,” he said humbly. The wine arrived, and he poured her a glass. “You’re right,” he said. “It really is awful. I’ll make sure to remember that. I suppose we should start telling each other who we are and such, shouldn’t we, if we’re going to do this whatever it is we’re doing? You go first, I’m sure you’re more interesting. Where did you grow up?”

The food arrived when she had got herself as far as university, and she tasted her pork loin, crunchy outside and meltingly tender within.

“Fennel,” she identified approvingly.

He reached over and forked a mouthful.

“Rosemary, of course,” he said.

“And just enough pepper and garlic.”

“But not too much. My venison’s amazing, too, want to taste?”

Lulu accepted a forkful.

“Good,” she said. “I like the little back taste of vinegar.”

“He is good.” Liam nodded. “Word’s getting out, too—I’ll have Dad give him a call tomorrow before someone else gets there. He’s supposed to be a bit eccentric, but that sort of goes with the territory, and he obviously knows his way around a kitchen.”

Lulu looked at him thoughtfully.

“You mean people get jobs doing this?” she said. “Cooking in restaurants?”

“Well, yes, Lulu,” he said. “They’re called chefs.”