I wanted to be with him.

And now, this sham of keeping things casual and being nervous about committing too soon, concealing the truth about how committed I was whether I liked it or not, was just one more secret to hide.

How could loving someone be so wonderful and yet so heart-wrenching at the same time?

‘Of course.’ Daniel waited until I’d plucked up the courage to look him in the eye, so he could show me that he meant it. ‘We’ll take this slow. Do it right.’

‘Thank you.’

On that note, having successfully tainted the evening with my poisonous past, I called it a night and went to bed.

27

The next few days continued on much the same note. Becky was ecstatic to hear all about the trip while we added the finishing touches to Hope’s bedroom. She was unsurprisingly bewildered about my insistence on taking things slowly.

‘You are clearly potty about each other. Why hold back?’

I stood back to check that the photograph of Charlie I’d hung on the wall was straight. ‘Why not? If it’s meant to be, we’ve got plenty of time to settle into it. Besides, my track record with men is unanimously dismal. It’s wise to take things slowly, given the potential fallout if things go wrong.’

‘The only thing that could go wrong is you being so feeble and cowardly that things fizzle out and one of you moves on before it gets anywhere good!’ Becky retorted through a mouthful of curtain hooks.

‘It’s already good, thank you very much. I’m not going to let you bully me into rushing it. Especially not when there’s a baby involved.’

‘Oh, but…’ she started to protest.

‘And I will remind you, as if there was any chance of you forgetting, that Luke starts on the bathrooms on Monday. Until then, you get to decide where the line goes when it comes to embarrassing interference in friends’ love-lives.’

Becky turned bright red at the mere mention of Luke. She had it even worse than me. ‘I’ll behave. I promise! Please don’t say anything, Eleanor. It’s different with me and Luke.’

‘Like I said, you get to draw the line.’

‘The line is very, very far back!’

‘Excellent.’

By Friday evening, we were ready for the grand reveal. I didn’t go so far as to move any of Daniel’s personal possessions upstairs, but Becky and I had done what we could to make it feel homely. The main attic room was now painted a soft white, with a dark grey accent wall behind the bed. We’d added photographs of the farm and the family, along with a selection of Charlie’s old postcards set in a mahogany frame.

We’d reused the original shelving, sanding it down and painting it a lighter grey to match a rug that we’d relocated from another bedroom. Geometrically patterned blinds hung at the huge windows, and a few touches like bedside lamps made out of a tree-trunk and a stash of books and his ‘player of the year’ football trophy finished it off. It was a mix of cosy warmth and practicality, and it suited Daniel perfectly. I had even framed an old spreadsheet of farm accounts and hung it on one wall as a joke. He said that he loved it. Then he draped an arm around my neck, pulled me close and planted a smacker on my lips, right in front of Becky, so I supposed he meant what he said.