‘You’re still angry with me,’ she said quietly, looking up at him as he looked back down at her in the same way too: his eyes drinking her in, soaking her up like she was water to his roots.

‘I’ll always be angry with you.’ It was a statement of fact, plain and simple.

She felt a stab of disappointment, a red tint of shame begin to bleed into the pristine perfection of their reunion. She didn’t want to talk about the past. She didn’t even want to think about the future. She wanted to stay in this moment, this one right here, filled up with a golden light. But it couldn’t be ignored. The past clung to them like weeds, the bad memories as well as the good. ‘You know Jules and I . . . didn’t last?’ She almost whispered the words, as though by keeping them hollow they would leave no trace on the here and now.

He loosened his grip on her at the mention of his name. ‘Well, I won’t pretend to be surprised.’

‘It was the biggest mistake of my life, you have to believe that. I’ve never regretted anything more.’

He was very still now and she could see the pain was still alive in the very furthest reaches of his eyes. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do. I do,’ she said urgently, holding his arms harder, pulling him tighter to her. How could she convey to him that for the first time in years she actually felt happy? Fully alive? She had been sleepwalking all this time and she’d never even known it.

Instead they lay there in still and silent communion, gazes locked, suspended in their own private bubble, the pain and exquisite joy of their first love pulsing between them, before he broke the seal and bent down to kiss her lightly, once, twice, three times . . . She closed her eyes in rapture, the kisses feeling like an answer to a question she hadn’t even asked.

Her phone rang loudly on the bedside table and, instinctively, they both turned to look at it.

Oh God, no.

His expression changed. His voice too. She actually felt him flinch. ‘. . . Aren’t you going to answer it?’

‘No, I . . . no.’ She bit her lip and shook her head, but it was too late. They had both seen Stephen’s name on the screen.

For several long moments, there was nothing: no movement, no sound, just the uncertain hovering between opposite worlds: past and present, love and hate, trust and despair. He stared at her, his eyes travelling over the contours of her face, before he pushed himself up and off her. Decision made.

He walked across the room – he always had been magnificent, naked; that rower’s physique . . . She felt another stab of longing for him. ‘Who is he?’

‘N-no one.’

He shot her a derisory glance as he stepped into his clothes. ‘Don’t play me for a fool. Not again, Charlotte. Things are different now.’