Naked, we make love on the blanket as the wind whips sand against us and the seagulls scream above us. Liam seems to like the thrill of it, but I can’t help but shiver, my skin coated in goosebumps. I’m distracted; I can’t shake the memory of the person I thought I saw on the beach yesterday when I was looking for stones. What if I didn’t imagine it? What if they’re here right now, watching us? The sense of being spied on grows, averting my attention, making me turn my head and scour the horizon.

I feel self-conscious and I can’t relax, and when we’ve finished, I’m quick to pull on my clothes.

‘Was that OK?’ Liam asks, stroking my arm as he lies beside me, drowsy and smiling.

‘Great,’ I say, not wanting to upset him or let him know I’ve got the unnerving sense we’re being watched. I move to open the picnic hamper, taking out the sandwiches and handing both to Liam. ‘Not hungry?’ he asks.

I shake my head. ‘Not really.’

He unwraps his sandwich and takes a bite. ‘Hand us a beer?’ he says.

I lever off the cap and hand him a bottle and then do the same with my own. Liam knocks his against mine. ‘Happy anniversary,’ he says. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ I say, the words whipping away on the wind.

I cast a glance over my shoulder towards the forest, a shiver running up my spine.

Chapter Nine

I dress for dinner, pulling on the slinky black dress that I know Liam likes. ‘Very Audrey Hepburn,’ he said, the time I wore it on one of our early dates. It was my birthday and he took me for an incredible meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. That was the first time he told me he loved me, and it was one of the best nights of my life. I remember how I felt that night – like I was floating on air – and genuinely, it was the first time I’d ever felt beautiful.

I smile sadly when I recall my mum telling me how happy she was for me when I called her later that night to tell her how the date had gone.

My mum loved Liam, could see how good he was to me and was happy that I’d found someone who so obviously adored me after my previous two dating disasters. She liked his old-fashioned manners, the fact he was a gentleman; and it didn’t hurt that he brought flowers when he met her for the first time. He went up even more in her esteem when he fixed her leaking kitchen tap and mended the garden fence.

‘It’s nice to have a man around here who’s good with his hands,’ she’d said to me with a naughty smile, admiring Liam through the kitchen window as he hammered nails into a post.