Kate knows it will be lilies. More white ones. She guesses Rob’s still feeling bad about returning early to London yesterday. Jake used to give her flowers too but never bought ones. He used to cut them when he was out walking in the forest. Honeysuckle, dog-rose and cow parsley, tied up with meadow grass. Rob isn’t a great one for getting his hands dirty in the woods and he wouldn’t have survived one night on their leaky old narrowboat. Everything has to be clean and in the right place, like the house. It’s a measure of the man that he’s allowed her to come into his home and make such a mess.

Bex is still having a shower as Kate half-heartedly tidies up their breakfast things. She’s filled with a sudden desire to drive up to London, try to recapture some of the loved-up feelings from before. Rediscover the Rob who walked onto her hospital ward that first day, his eyes full of kindness and curiosity. Maybe it’s only seeing him at weekends that’s messing with her head, making everything feel so disconnected. She needs to be with him in London, stay at his flat, meet him for lunch at the office. Be an ordinary couple.

She wanders over to the easel where her painting of Stretch sits half finished. Behind it, on the mirror, she’s stuck up a collection of photos of her and Rob from their first few weeks down in Cornwall together, when he was working from here. She leans forward and looks at him, the man she loves: emerging from the waves with a surfboard, teasing her by a rock pool with a crab in his hands, standing on the harbour wall at sunset drinking Provence rosé.

These photos all look like Rob, a reminder of those first few weeks here. She was still in considerable discomfort then, but the pain was lessened by the ease of her new life. She and Jake used to say that they didn’t want a lot of money, just enough to make things run a bit more smoothly. That’s how it feels with Rob. He hasn’t let his ridiculous wealth change him. They go to the village pub for dinner – coconut vegetable curry for her, cod and chips for him. There just isn’t that flinch any more when the bill arrives. And she doesn’t worry that the car will break down.