Her sleep was harder. Unused to sharing a bed, she tried to keep still because of Tomas and stop herself rolling into the dent in the centre. Also, she was too exhausted to sleep and her mind was seething. She needed to make sense of what was happening – the sex, her feelings for Tomas, the discoveries that were crowding down thick and fast in this complicated country in which she found herself.

But she must have slept. When next conscious of turning her head, it was to see sunlight thrusting through the window and striking the wooden floor. At first, she focused on it, but it was too bright and she moved her gaze onto the wooden walls. These varied in colour from honey to dark brown and had pleasing knots and whorls on which to fix. Birdsong sifted through the open casement window along with a piney, grassy scent. Tomas was pressed up against her, which was uncomfortable but not unbearable. She thought: this is what happiness is like.

A hand touched her thigh and she sighed with pleasure. ‘Is that a yes?’ asked Tomas.

‘It is.’

He rolled on top of her. ‘I must warn you that I’m unwashed, unbrushed and stinking of alcohol.’

He wasn’t joking. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

The sunlight fell across her face and she blinked.

‘Do you know you’re beautiful, Laure?’

They stayed in bed the entire morning, emerging at lunchtime. Leo and Manicki were outside sunning themselves on the bench. There was no sign of anyone else.

Leo waggled a finger in greeting and said in English, ‘You are commanded to speak very softly.’

‘Good morning, Leo,’ she said.

He clapped his hands over his ears – long-fingered, lovely hands, she noticed. ‘Too loud. Too LOUD.’

She giggled helplessly.

Laure tried to memorize every detail of that day. The sun on her skin, the birdsong, the soil between her bare feet. The taste of the excellent stew conjured into being by a wild-haired Manicki who turned out to have a domestic streak. The sight of Leo flat-out on the grass. (‘He doesn’t speak much.’ Tomas prodded the prone body with a foot. ‘But when he does, watch out.’) A sense that she had been invited into an exclusive kingdom from which other comers would be repulsed.

She tried not to be obvious, but she could not prevent herself sneaking looks at Tomas who was wearing a faded blue shirt the colour of an English summer sky. The colour, she told herself, of love. He had, she noted with fascination, a habit of gesticulating with his left hand. His feet were long and thin but he was thin generally. Too thin, perhaps. In the light, his brown hair held a spectrum of chestnut and copper.

More than once, their gazes collided and the fusion of desire, tenderness and excitement that went through her body was to be hit by an electric bolt.