‘Not here. We can’t,’ she murmured, looking up into the trees, but he already had his hand up her skirt. He had waited forever. He couldn’t let it go again. Her hand pushed his away.

‘There’s nowhere else, Ver,’ he said, touching her thigh. She twitched and he smoothed her hair, whispered into it, ‘It’ll be all right. We’re as good as official.’ There was no need to fear any more. She would marry him now – she must.

‘I don’t know, Arty.’

But he did. He laid her down on the rug over the damp ground and kissed her neck and then followed where his fingers went, kissing up her legs, feeling the smooth static of her stockings on his lips.

‘What if someone comes? Oh.’ But he heard her through treacle. The world had shrunk to her body and his.

No one appeared and she stopped talking, just let him touch her. He looked at her below him and noticed the dark shadows across her serious, intent face, from the canopy of the trees above them, swaying in the wind, and he drew her closer to him so he couldn’t see her expression. Her eyes disturbed him and he pulled her into him so that she could not get away or turn into someone else.

Once, she moaned as if in pain and then nothing. She hardly moved, just lay still, frozen, gripping his back and he kept moving in and out, as gently as he could, expunging the memory of the woman in Yorkshire and the slick of guilt that covered him, until he stopped thinking and it was over, done. She was his.

He lay with her curled into him, her mouth in the crook of his neck, her legs twined around his.

‘Are you OK?’ he said, although he was afraid of the answer. Her silence made him scared he’d done something wrong. He’d thought about this moment for so long and in his imagining it had been different, slower, beautiful even. But his nerves had got the better of him.

‘Yes,’ she said, but her head was still buried into his neck and he couldn’t tell if it was true or not.

‘Come on,’ he said, rubbing her back, ‘we’ll catch our death.’ He caught a glimpse of the goosebumped, raw skin on her thigh.

Covered up again, wrapped in their layers, they huddled under the tree. He held her face in his hands. She seemed fragile; she was shivering. Verity was usually so sure of herself, so straight-backed, so queen-like, it was alarming to see her like this, white and pink and trembling like a child.

‘Did I hurt you?’ he said, but he couldn’t look at her.

‘It was just a… shock, that’s all.’