His father had always tried to do the right thing and what good had it done him? There he was, marooned in the house of horrors, with neither the money nor the energy to tackle its dilapidation. He’d finally come around to the idea of selling the place. But who would buy a house where a priest had been killed? Major bad voodoo, as one of the lads at college had put it. In the two years it had been on the market, his parents had welcomed a trail of rubberneckers but hadn’t received one serious bid. Tom had advised Nina to leave Tess alone, and she’d got narky with him. ‘Tess ought to think more of herself,’ she’d said. If you asked Tom, Nina still felt guilty about the way her old man had behaved. He told himself to stay quiet. Despite everything, Nina was close to her parents, and he didn’t want to upset her.

Nina. He’d convinced himself that this was their summer, yet somehow he’d made no progress. They sparred and they flirted. They danced around each other, but for one reason or another, he always drew back. Imagine if he did make an advance and was rejected? How humiliating would that be? As it was, he found it hard to be close to her. Thankfully, she was slightly more buttoned up than Tess, who was given to wafting around the flat with half of her clothes missing.