‘No, of course it is not.’

‘It is a beautiful night. I wondered if you wanted to take a walk down the beach with me, to watch the full moon?’

‘Yes, OK. Why not?’ Natalia didn’t have to think twice about it. Lying here torturing herself with thoughts of Ben was not helping matters in the slightest.

The sand was silvery and soft between her toes, and the sea glittered under the enormous moon and billions of stars. As they walked along, it felt natural to reach out and take Juho’s hand. He was a good man, and there hadn’t been many of those in her life. Maybe it was the stillness of the beach, where the only sound was that of the waves against the shore; more probably, it was her desperate loneliness. Juho was a good, decent man, she told herself again, trying to rid her mind of the image of Ben. Juho’s bare-chested, nicely muscled body was right next to hers and, as she looked at his fine profile in the moonlight, she was suddenly desperate for something more.

She stopped walking and very slowly turned round to face him, looking straight into his kind hazel eyes.

‘Natalia.’ Juho ran a finger down her cheek, looking back into her eyes. He was slightly shorter than she was. ‘You are a beautiful woman, and I find you very attractive, but I think you are suffering deeply. I want to be your friend, if you want it, but no more than that. Besides …’ He paused, briefly. ‘I am celibate.’

‘Oh.’ Natalia let it register for a moment, then, out of nowhere, gales of laughter started bubbling up. ‘Oh oh oh, I cannot tell you how glad I am! Oh, Juho, oh …!’ The relief that she wouldn’t betray Ben, even though she would never see him again, made her laugh so much that her knees suddenly buckled beneath her, and she collapsed on the sand, slightly hysterical. Juho sat down next to her, smiling benignly. Once she had finished laughing, he took a deep toke on the spliff he had been rolling.

‘You want to tell me why you are –’ Natalia bit her lip to stop herself spluttering with laughter again – ‘celibate?’

‘You want some of this?’ He offered her the joint and she took it. ‘It will not be forever, probably. But everything was getting too much. Back in Helsinki, I worked in advertising, and I was out every night, snorting cocaine, drinking too much vodka, fucking as many beautiful women as I could. Oh, let me tell you, Natalia, I would have been like totally into you in those days.’

Natalia smiled at him. ‘I thank you for that.’

‘So one day I told myself: enough. This is no good for your karma, man.’ Natalia tried not to smile at this. ‘So here I am. And I feel more at peace now than I have ever been before. Does that make sense to you?’