I couldn’t go back inside and I couldn’t face Cory—not now the rational morning light had turned him into a rational morning man—so I drifted over to the car instead. Tom was sitting sideways on the passenger seat with his feet on the gravel, wafting the front door back and forth like a hefty fan.

“Your Dad chain-smoked,” he explained, before we’d even said hello. “I mean literally, all the way from London. My poor Fiesta will never smell the same.”

I dragged the fingers of both hands through my hair, pulling at the knots till my scalp hurt. Bits of grass and seed sprinkled my shoulders.

“Tom, I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”

He stood up and shut the car door.

“Oh Freya, I’m sorry. I know what you must be thinking.”

“I just . . . I genuinely want to know why you and Dad are here?”

Tom dug a pocket of black earth in the gravel with the toe of his shoe.

“Your dad rang me up late last night, saying you’d disappeared and your phone had gone dead . . .”

“Oh no . . .”

“I did my best to calm him down, but I suppose you must have forgotten to text him after you arrived, and he got a call from the guest house saying you hadn’t checked in . . .”

I shut my eyes and pressed against them with my fists.

“I told him you’d be OK, but you know what he’s like. He was all for calling the police, but I said you’d be mortified, and anyway . . .”

“Anyway what?”

“Well, I had an idea where you might have gone.”

I loosened my fists and let them fall to my sides.

“He’s fine now,” Tom insisted. “Probably feeling daft. Your . . . what’s-his-name . . . did all the hard work, charming him round. What is his name, anyway?”

“Cory Byrne. And he’s not ‘mine.’ What did he say?”

I could feel Tom’s eyes on my face.

“Something about your getting caught in the rain with your suitcase, and his mother inviting you to stay, and they couldn’t run you down to town because they don’t have a car anymore . . .”

I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked across the lawn. My father was shambling along at Cory’s side, his hands behind his back and his hair fluffed up above his ears. He looked as if he’d been born doddery and mild-mannered.

“It turns out your friend’s mother is some great luminary in the art world,” said Tom. “Or used to be. Diane, is it? Or Diana? Anyway, your father recognised her name and went into raptures, and meanwhile your friend—”

“Cory.”

“Cory turns out to be the world’s greatest admirer of your Dad’s reviews for the London Globe.”

“Oh, I see.”

We watched them weave their unhurried way around the rose beds, and I remembered last night like an improbable story I’d made up in my head. Cory was a stranger to me in broad daylight. The back of his head looked entirely unfamiliar as it disappeared through a leafy archway, and I couldn’t believe my own self-assurance last night. How could I have lain on the wet grass with him, touching and being touched, drifting between sleep and bliss? Where did I get the confidence? Perhaps it had something to do with the darkness. Perhaps it was because the moonlight had broken him into manageable pieces—a row of knuckles here, a lock of hair there, a dusty foot, a glinting eye, a moistened lip.