‘Does he know?’ I asked, my voice close to a whisper.

‘I told him you were on your way,’ Becky said.

So, he was deliberately avoiding me.

I nodded, ignoring the tear that dribbled out as I levered my stiff leg over the doorstep. Ignoring that there was no strong, caring man here to help me.

It was a long, laborious ordeal to get up to my bedroom. My head throbbed in time with every broken heartbeat, and the wound in my knee felt as though it had been shredded open all over again. Still the tears streamed constantly, like a faulty tap. I mutely started opening drawers while Becky beavered beside me, packing several bags by the time I’d weakly stuffed three tops into a holdall.

Noticing my pathetic progress, she stopped and handed me a towel that had been draped over the chair. ‘I’ll sort this, you go and have a shower. Even better, run a bath.’

I glanced towards the window. ‘I think I’m best just getting out of here as soon as possible.’

‘Eleanor, do you really want your parents to see you like this?’ She gently turned me towards the mirror, and I watched my face crumpling.

Hair looking like a bad wig, face and arms flecked with dark red scrapes and purple bruises, an ugly crimson slash across my chin, haggard eyes ringed with black. I was almost relieved that Daniel hadn’t seen me. Becky was right. Never mind my parents, no respectable taxi driver would allow me in their cab looking like this.

Once in the shower, it was almost impossible to drag myself back out again. The sensation of the near-scalding spray, how the sound muffled both the world outside and within my ravaged head, the frail hope that if I let the water wash over me for long enough, I would feel clean.

Eventually I had to come out, or else risk passing out into the shower tray. I gingerly got dried and dressed, every wincing movement a vivid recollection of the last time I had stood in this bathroom battered and bruised. A lifetime ago. Back then, I had been mourning the loss of Charlie. Now, the grief at having to leave her family engulfed me.

And yet.

Beneath the shroud of bleak despair, I still had a tiny spark of hope.

Maybe Daniel was busy.

He needed some time, like Ziva said.

He wouldn’t leave the others to clear up the orchard without him, he wasn’t that type of person.

He loved me… he would listen because he loved me…

He would see that the woman he’d fallen in love with was the real me, after all…

He would surely ask me to stay, at least until we’d talked about it, until he’d let me explain…

He was waiting in the kitchen.

Face grim, arms folded. It was only when he looked at me that I saw hiding behind the defensive stance was pain.