She stepped into him. ‘Come and have a drink with me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not? Don’t you want to?’

‘It’s not that. We’re supposed to go ahead with the tutorial without Doc.’

‘And do you always do what you’re supposed to do, Mr Master’s?’ she asked, lightly raking a nail down the front of his chest.

His hand caught her by the wrist, stopping her. ‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘You know what.’ His eyes met hers properly then, desire marbled with frustration at her games, and she felt a sudden jolt as she did sometimes when she fell asleep too quickly, her heart shocking herself awake again. She felt wide awake now – the blurry fuzziness of today’s hangover dissipating in a flash as they stood there in the narrow hall, rigid and linked. ‘I’m not one of your toys.’

What was happening? It was supposed to have been a joke, another of her signature teases, but somehow she was the one caught in the net. Out of sight around the corner, the sound of a stampede was growing down the hall – bellows and cheers and running feet and doors being thumped – but she was oblivious to it, watching him transfixed as he saw straight past her fakery and bullshit, the party queen crap that kept everyone else fooled and at arm’s length. She was completely exposed before him and she didn’t know whether it was her fright of being caught in the act or the pity in his eyes that made unbidden tears suddenly bud in her eyes.

‘You’re worth more, you know,’ he said quietly.

‘More than what?’ she’d wanted to ask, but there had been no time. The rugger buggers were barrelling down the hall now and upon them, Rt Hon. Jules Fairfax scooping her up in a fireman’s lift with nary a word and spiriting her away as though she wasn’t mid-conversation with someone, as though that someone wasn’t even there. And as she was jogged out of sight, down the stairs and towards the bar, her gaze remained on him as she went back to her world, and he stayed in his . . .

A long pause cradled them both, time suspending her endless beat to give them breath. Was this real? Was she awake? Was it really him?

‘Hello, Charlotte,’ he said finally, his hand clasping hers in a pedestrian motion and undoing her world. ‘It’s been a long time.’

He had changed. His hair was longer, the muddy blonde side-swept style she remembered replaced by something shaggier and more bookish. He wore glasses too now, heavy-rimmed black ones that served to highlight those eyes that had always transfixed her. Gone too were the studenty sport shorts and t-shirts; today he was in a tobacco linen unlined jacket, pale-pink shirt and ivory chinos.

She watched him talk, filling in Mateo Mendoza with his impressive CV – a PhD at Yale after Oxford, and now a postdoctoral fellowship researching the civil war here. He looked calm and composed, but his eyes kept coming back to her like a bee to the flower. She had said barely a word since he had sat down, trying to soak him up, to absorb his presence, but he saturated her, filling every part of her mind, body and soul, and yet still she couldn’t contain him. He overwhelmed her senses and she realized she had been living in a world without colour, sound and taste and she hadn’t even known it. There had been no vibrancy, passion nor verve – everything had been automatic and robotic, correct yet not present; something always off like a jigsaw with one missing piece, the world a scrambled image. But seeing him again was like finding a missing part of herself, her shadow having somehow become unstitched from her, and now here it was, unfurled on the chair opposite, darker than ever in the Spanish sunshine.