I turned the key with conviction and this time the engine spluttered into life. I opened my eyes, ready to put it in first and release the handbrake, but then caught sight of the one person in the world I simply couldn’t face.

Ned charged out of the lodge door, soaking wet and wrapped in yet another inadequate towel. It was my arrival, all over again, only this time, I was leaving. I tore my eyes away and went to move forward, but he had let Bandit out with him and the mad dog leapt about the wheels, barking his head off. I didn’t dare move forward or back for fear of running him over.

‘Wait!’ Ned shouted, rushing over to the car. With Bandit on the case, he’d halted just long enough to pull on his boots which sat, like Dad’s always had, by the lodge door. ‘Liza, wait!’

‘I can’t!’ I shouted back, giving a blast on the horn. ‘Get hold of Bandit, will you? I need to go.’

‘No,’ said Ned, placing his hands on the bonnet. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

I feared for the security of his towel, but no more than I feared for my heart. This was exactly the sort of scene I had been hoping to avoid, not that I had really been expecting him to go to such lengths to stop me from leaving.

Given the look he had given me back in the office when I told him I’d changed my mind about everything I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he’d come out to wave me off and locked the gate behind me. Good riddance and all that.

But then, did I really think he’d react like that? If that had formed part of my thought process, then why had I engaged in such an elaborate cloak and dagger moonlight flit?

‘Please Ned,’ I said, opening the window a little so I didn’t have to shout. ‘Just let me go. Go back inside to Maya and forget I ever came back.’

He frowned at me through the windscreen.

‘Maya’s not here,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘I heard her,’ I told him. ‘I heard the pair of you come back earlier.’

‘She did walk back over with me,’ he said, starting to shiver, ‘because we needed to properly finish a conversation, we’d started days ago.’

Could that mean that there had been two proposals rather than one? I really hoped not. The thought made me feel sick.

‘But she went ages ago,’ Ned carried on.

‘Even so,’ I said, feeling marginally mollified, but still a bit bilious, ‘I still have to go. Just go back inside Ned. You’re freezing and I don’t know how long my car will keep going if I don’t move it.’