It turns out that they are the first to arrive. Chris and Kit are held up in traffic – so Bella informs her, after a series of pings on her mobile phone – and Molly and Bella are well into their second round of coffees and buttered teacakes when, through the glass window, Molly spies a tall, handsome man helping an older man, his back bent but still walking well, out of the car and into the building. And then there they are, approaching the table with beaming smiles.

For a moment she is struck speechless: even after nearly seventy years she’d have recognised him anywhere. His almost-white hair is still thick and the blue eyes astonishingly bright. Bella and Chris – his dark hair and high cheekbones remind her so much of the young Kit – are shaking hands and greeting each other. For a long second Molly and Kit say nothing, just staring silently into each other’s faces.

‘Hello, Molly. We must stop meeting like this,’ he says at last. The voice is so familiar, still strong and unwavering, and as he smiles, his teeth are still straight and white.

‘Is it really you? I can hardly believe it.’ She hears an unfamiliar giggle and realises that it’s hers. Everyone is sitting down now and getting through the tiresome business of ordering. But Molly cannot take her eyes off Kit. All she wants to do is reach across the table and take his hand. ‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ she says.

‘I remember you as clear as though it was yesterday. You’re still a beautiful woman, Molly Goddard.’

She feels herself blushing beneath the blusher. ‘And you always were a charmer, Kit Waddington.’

‘All these years,’ he says with a small sigh. ‘Getting to know you that summer was one of the best things that had ever happened to me – such a golden time, in my memory. Well, up until that terrible business when Jimmy disappeared. And your father, poor man. Did he ever recover?’

‘He came back home after a couple of months, but he was never really the same,’ Molly says. ‘None of us were.’

‘It must have been horrendous for you, losing Jimmy like that. Such a lovely little boy. I suppose they never found him?’

Molly shakes her head. ‘They stopped searching after a while. Closed the case.’

‘Dreadful, dreadful,’ Kit says. ‘You know they actually held me as a suspect?’

‘What? You? They held you?’ Molly is astonished. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Someone told them they’d seen Jimmy alone in the boat with me.’

‘So what? You taught him how to row. No crime in that, surely? You were just being kind.’