‘You shouldn’t have,’ she says, watching him use the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe away a smudge of dirt on the car’s large touchscreen between them. She’d meant to clean the car before he arrived. He likes things to be spotless. ‘I already have everything I need down here. Thanks to you.’

He reaches behind the seat, pulls out a small jewellery box from his bag and passes it to her. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, is the piece of frosted beach glass that they found last week. It’s now on a filigree silver chain. He knows she loves necklaces.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ she says, suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘Thank you.’

‘I wasn’t totally sure about the sizing.’ He stares at her neck, a look of intense concentration on his face. ‘Whether it would be too loose. I wanted it to be snug – you know, like a choker.’

She lets him fasten it, her neck tingling at his touch, but then the clasp catches a pinch of her skin at the back and she flinches. ‘Ouch,’ she says, playfully. It might be her imagination but he seems to hesitate a moment too long before apologising.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s a little tight.’

*

Kate glances across at Rob’s smooth, sleeping body and slips quietly out of bed, wrapping a cotton dressing gown around her as she steps out onto the terrace. It’s a warm August evening and no one can see her here. The isolated house, all glass and oak and concrete, is cut deep into the Cornish hillside and faces out to sea, which is empty tonight, apart from the winking lights of tankers moored in the distance off Falmouth.

‘You OK?’ Rob calls out.

She swings around. It’s too dark in the bedroom to see him properly.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she says, turning back towards the bay, where a ribbon of moonlight has been laid across the water.

A moment later, his arms are wrapped around her from behind. ‘Come back to bed,’ he whispers in her ear.

She can feel him against her, a familiar swelling. She rests her hand on his smooth forearm and thinks again about the necklace he gave her earlier, his insensitive response to her squeal of pain. It still niggles.

‘Thank you for the present,’ she says. He must have just been tired. Hardly surprising after a long week at work and then the flight down.

‘Not too tight?’ he asks.

‘It’s perfect.’

Back inside the bedroom, they snuggle up in the darkness. In all other respects, he’s played it well this evening. He ran her a bath with Moroccan rose oil and brought in two glasses of chilled champagne. Her exhaustion of earlier slipped away. Afterwards, he was the one who fell asleep almost instantly, like a laptop closing.

‘Talk to me,’ she says now, quietly. ‘Tell me about your week.’