All in all, it was a spectacular save. And not only had Darcy come up with the idea and driven her to the supermarket, he had also stayed with her while she assembled, iced and decorated the cakes, making no mention of the fact that she didn’t seem unwell. When she told him he was welcome to go, he’d merely smiled and said, ‘Nowhere else to be.’ At one point, as she was adding the final layer of icing, she looked up and saw him watching her intently.

‘What?’ she said.

‘I’ve never seen an artist at work before,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty awesome.’

She waited for him to turn it into a joke. He didn’t. She wasn’t sure she believed him, and yet there was something about him standing there that made her feel a little taller.

When she was done, he took the cake to the wedding. He returned afterwards to let her know it had been successfully delivered.

‘I’m not sure how I can thank you,’ she said.

‘Go on a date with me,’ he replied, without missing a beat.

‘Unfortunately,’ she said, ‘I don’t date.’

‘You don’t date?’ His confused expression nearly made her laugh out loud. ‘You mean . . . not at all?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Are you religious?’

‘No.’

It was as if she’d told him she didn’t eat food, but feasted on the spines of lizards instead. ‘Then . . . why?’

‘I just . . . don’t.’

Darcy stared off into space for a minute, as if trying to get his head around this unexpected piece of information. It seemed to take him a while. And then, just when Rachel thought he was going to move on, he straightened. ‘If you don’t date, then why did you agree to go out with me?’

Rachel felt a pulse of shame. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘my sister agreed to the last date. She took my phone.’

‘Your sister?’ A beat of silence. ‘So you didn’t really want to go out with me?’

He looked so stricken, Rachel wondered if it was possible to die of shame.

‘Listen,’ she heard herself say, ‘as I said, I don’t date. But after what you’ve done for me today, I think I can make an exception.’

They’d agreed to have dinner tomorrow night. Just a casual dinner, in a public venue. She avoided asking herself what was the worst that could happen because, well, she didn’t want to go there.

Rather than agonise over it in advance, Rachel decided to focus on her mother.

It always took her a little time to get into the headspace to see her mother. It was just so hard to anticipate what would happen. She had to prepare for the possibility that her mum would be having a bad day. That Mum might not want to see her . . . or would be delighted to see her because she thought Rachel had come to take her home. Once, when Rachel visited, Mum had screamed at her to ‘get the fuck out of my room’. Each day was a fresh, new, heartbreaking challenge. And today, as well as dealing with that new challenge, she was hoping to get some information out of Mum.