He sat up straight, rubbing at the crick in his neck, and looked over at Merrin, who was bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat. Her joy was infectious and a good thing to see, worried as he had been about her returning home for a wedding when the last one she attended was the disaster of her own. He was also aware of how he would be judged, eyed up and no doubt rated against the one that got away. But he could take it – especially when the prize was Merrin.

‘Yes! It’s the sea! But I don’t want to end up in it. Please keep your eyes on the road.’ He covered his own with his fingers as the car jumped down the lane. ‘Tell me when it’s safe to look.’

‘Don’t be such a baby; I know these roads like the back of my hand.’ She threw her head back and laughed.

This, he figured, was the excited phase she had mentioned earlier. The car rounded the lane and they began the slow descent into the village of Port Charles. He looked over at her smiling face as she rolled down her window to let the atmosphere of the winding streets and narrow terraces fill the car. How he loved the way her short hair curled under her ear and showed off her heart-shaped face. A face he never grew tired of staring at. One of the things he loved most about her was how unaware of her beauty she was.

‘Look, a rainbow!’ He pointed at the house on the corner of a narrow junction with a rainbow painted in glorious colours.

She laughed. ‘That’s Nancy Cardy’s house, Jarvis’s mum and Ruby’s future mother-in-law. She got so sick of the paint scrapes on the corner of her cottage that, a few years back, she decided to embrace them, adding to them with her own acrylics, and the result, as you can see, is a four-foot rainbow on the corner of her home. Jarvis told me the paint scrapes were probably worth more than the house itself when you take into account the fancy metallic finishes of the Porsches, Land Rovers and suchlike that flood the place at the first sniff of sunshine!’

‘I love it!’

‘Me too.’

A voice called out. ‘All right, Merrin! Beautiful day!’

‘All right, Mac! ’Tis that.’ She waved her hand at a man who was carrying a crate of Coke bottles up the steep pavement. Turning, she smiled at him, almost in recognition that this greeting had been uneventful, nothing awkward about it, as if she had seen him only yesterday. She sat taller in the seat, as if it had given her confidence.