“I can see why,” I say. A flash of yellow has me turning my head. “Oh!” I exclaim. “Ben, look!”

Perched on a branch beside us is a butterfly the colour of sun-kissed Italian lemons. On its forewings is a perfect orange blaze that looks almost like a setting sun.

“Gonepteryx cleopatra,” I breathe, getting silently to my feet and edging over.

“I don’t know what you just said,” says Ben, following my gaze. “But the colours are incredible.” He comes over to join me.

“It’s a Cleopatra butterfly, a male,” I explain in a low voice. “You can tell because of his colouring. The males are much more flashy than the females.”

Ben chuckles at that. With a faint trembling of its wings the butterfly takes to the sky again, drifting quickly out of view, like a dream. When I straighten up I realize that Ben and I are standing very close together. I can feel the warmth from his arm against my own.

“Hungry?” Ben asks, holding my gaze for a long moment.

“Starving,” I agree firmly, dropping back down on to the rug where Ben joins me. He reaches into the picnic basket and passes me a wax-paper-wrapped parcel. Our hands touch, and I feel a zing of awareness run up my arm; my cheeks flush with heat.

These involuntary physical responses that I have around him are really very interesting, I tell myself, trying to steady my breathing.

“What are you thinking about?” Ben asks, his voice a little husky.

“I was thinking that the physiological and psychological causes of blushing are deeply fascinating,” I say, wrestling with the wax paper around my sandwich.

“Of course you were.” Ben sighs, leaning back on his elbows.

“Charles Darwin called it the most peculiar and most human of expressions,” I say, biting into bread filled with sweet, roasted peppers and cured ham. I make a sound of deep approval. “This is amazing.”

“I know,” Ben says, turning his attention to his own lunch. “I think it is Rosa I will miss most of all when the summer is over.”

My mouth is suddenly dry. “Don’t even speak of it,” I say. “It seems impossible that it can all come to an end.”

Ben must be able to read some of the sadness on my face. “What will you do, do you think?” he asks lightly. “When you are home again?”

“Do?” I repeat, my voice dull. “Nothing really. Nothing at all.”

“What a waste.” Ben dips his fingers into a jar of black olives that shine like slick chips of magnetite.

I force a smile. “I don’t have a huge amount of choice in the matter.”

“Rubbish,” Ben says succinctly. “For someone who’s such a loud-mouthed, antagonistic trouble-maker, you come over all meek and mild-mannered when you talk about going home.”

“Thanks a lot,” I say.