‘I have loved you since the very first day I met you,’ Francesco continued. ‘I don’t understand why you think you aren’t worthy of that love. It’s here. I’m holding it right here in my hands for you, desperate to give it to you, and not because I’m selfish and want to claim you or own you. I want to give this love to you to free up my goddamn hands, so I can hold all the love you give me. Because you do. You love me. It couldn’t be like this between us if you didn’t. You. Love. Me. And I love you!’

A man stood near the bar put his pint down to clap, slowly at first – clap, clap, clap – and then the woman beside him joined in, and then somebody else, until the whole pub was whooping and cheering and somebody shouted, ‘Kiss him, Pen!’ and Penny turned and looked at all these well-wishers, and she froze. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do anything. Every sad thought about herself came flooding back – men leave, nobody sticks around. Nobody sticks around for her, anyway. She looked at Francesco – he deserved a woman who could give him his own kids, a woman who wasn’t broken or lost, a woman who could trust him. It was all too much. She was better on her own. No matter how close she’d come to letting herself love him she couldn’t take that one last step. She knew how to be on her own. She didn’t know how to give in to this feeling with Francesco.

She looked back around, thinking of Priyesh, feeling self-conscious at what he’d just heard, but he was gone. Instead there was only Francesco and, in that moment, even seeing him was too much for her.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said, panicked. ‘I’m sorry.’

Penny pushed through the throng of people to the stairs that would lead her to her flat. She took them two at a time and locked the door behind her. After five minutes of hyperventilating, desperately trying to get herself to calm down, she could hear the noise in the bar get louder and she knew she had to go downstairs to help. They’d be totally overwhelmed without her. She pulled herself together, engaging the ‘I am the boss’ muscle it would take to head back downstairs. She splashed her face with cold water, found some dry shoes, and joined Charlie behind the bar.

‘You okay?’ they said, clocking her ashen face and fake smile.

‘Nope,’ said Penny, teeth clenched. ‘Not one bit.’

She let herself assess who was still in the pub, but there was no sight of Francesco, or of Priyesh. She just caught the back of Thomas’s head before he ducked around a corner with Maggie from the fishmongers. She didn’t care.

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