Maddy blushed – something about the way he said it had sounded dirty, even though the words weren’t. A boy her age would never just up and tell her she was pretty. It wouldn’t occur to them to flatter her, or else they’d be afraid of sounding sleazy. She liked it, she decided. And suddenly her winter purgatory, minding this tacky bar in a dying seaside town, seemed a lot brighter. ‘That’s eleven euros fifty, please.’

He took out his leather wallet, which looked expensive. ‘Damn! I meant to get cash. I’ve only a ten.’

‘We take cards.’ She didn’t want him leaving, he might not come back.

He hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, OK then.’

She took his card, reading the name, but it was initials, telling her nothing. ‘What’s it stand for?’ she said, after he’d keyed in the PIN and she’d shunted the order to Geraldo, the local chef, who was incensed that she’d interrupted his fag break to make him actually do some work. His day was one long fag break, punctuated by the occasional lacklustre peeling of potatoes.

The blue-eyed stranger sipped his beer again. His gaze locked into hers, and she felt her stomach spin in a sick, pleasant way, like being on a waltzer at a fairground. Every bit of her felt alive, where before she’d been sulky and apathetic, blood thudding through her veins. Even the framed pictures of Jim Bowen over the bar looked quaint and charming.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you can call me Sean.’

Eleanor

Eleanor

I needed proof. Everything else was just speculation, doubt, cobwebs crowding my brain. The word of a drunk, a liar. An insane story about a faked death. They say if you know a person, you know how to find them. And I knew my husband. I knew him better now than when he was with me.