‘Yes you do,’ said Penny, smiling. ‘It’s almost exactly as you left it.’

Her uncle took in the pub. Penny had, to be fair, put her stamp on it. Things were cleaner and more orderly. She’d added in more textures to the rooms – softer throws and pillows and different candle holders and linen napkins instead of paper ones. The fires were always stacked, even if it wasn’t cold enough to light one, and the bar glistened and gleamed. Various members of staff made their way towards their old boss, genuinely thrilled to see him. Penny waited patiently as David asked after husbands and wives, children and parents, his rapport with his staff obvious and natural.

‘Good to see you looking well,’ Charlie said to him. ‘You frightened the life out of us.’

Not one of them, though, asked if he was coming back. It was obvious to everyone that he wouldn’t be – he looked so well, in fact, that a return to his old lifestyle would surely cause nothing but damage.

‘It’s the best thing we ever did, spending time down there on the coast,’ he said to more than one person, riffing on how healing being near the water was, and how restorative the sea air.

Clementine, Rima and Eric had gone on a short tour of the area so that Penny and her uncle could catch up whilst Eric could check in on friends they’d not seen in a while to invite them for drinks later. Penny told Uncle David that Francesco had gone. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told him before. She wondered if saying it to him would have made Francesco’s leaving seem important, and for weeks she’d tried to make out it wasn’t so. She’d tried calling Francesco that morning before she’d even got out of bed and had chance to lose her nerve, but the phone issued a foreign dial tone and rang out. She didn’t text to follow up: he’d see the missed call. That was enough.

‘That’s such a shame,’ Uncle David said, looking around the flat and taking an inventory of what Penny had changed. ‘I liked Francesco, very much. I liked him being up here with you, too.’

‘Well,’ said Penny, offering up a plate of biscuits. ‘Let me tell you, he could be a real dick.’

Uncle David stirred cream into his coffee. ‘Can’t we all,’ he said, mildly.

‘No,’ said Penny. ‘But I mean like, possessive. Dark. Moody. And jealous.’

‘Of you?’

‘Yeah.’

Uncle David considered this information. ‘And you?’ he said, finally.

‘What do you mean, and me?’

‘Could you be dark or moody with him?’

Penny considered this. She had so seldom ever felt anything other than excited to be with Francesco, really. He made everything seem more exciting. Even in the kitchen, after hours, eating pasta. For a stretch, there hadn’t needed to be anything else.