‘Hi, Wendy, hi, Grandma, nice to… hear you,’ Daniel called.

‘She’s joking!’ Grandma called back. ‘You go on, now, off you go!’

‘I am not joking!’

They were still arguing when we slipped out of the door.

We walked the whole hundred yards or so to the far end of the garden, where I led Daniel to a bench hidden behind a wall of clambering roses.

‘I think we should talk before we do anything else,’ I said, eyes firmly fixed on the roses.

‘Right.’ Daniel took in a deep breath. He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘I have a speech planned, if that’s okay?’

I nodded, unable to do anything else.

‘I can’t really remember it any more, but I’ll try to give you the gist… I’m so, massively, overwhelmingly sorry for how I handled everything. I have regretted it every second since you left. I can’t believe I let you go. You’d been beaten up and scared half to death, and instead of being there for you, I… froze. I can’t ever undo not racing to the hospital, I can’t ever be there for you when you needed me then, but I can promise to always be there if you ever need me again.’

‘Daniel… I think you had every right…’

‘No.’ He shook his head, vehemently. ‘No. What you said was true, I knew you. I know you. I was hurt and shocked that you’d hidden all that from me. I’ll admit that I was angry, and I felt betrayed. But once you’d gone, and I stopped being such an idiot and actually took a few minutes to think about it, I realised that I was angry you’d not told me. That you were going through this huge deal, and hadn’t felt able to trust me with it. You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d judge you, I’d think less of you and reject you for it. And I proved your fears right, didn’t I? I was a terrible boyfriend. I totally let you down in the worst possible way. I’m so sorry.’

‘I put you and Hope in danger. You should have been angry.’

‘No. Lucy was the danger. I put you in danger because you didn’t feel like you could tell me.’

‘But I was Nora Sharp. I wrote nasty things about people for money.’

‘I also read the beautiful, uplifting things that Eleanor Sharpley wrote, remember? And I also read a whole load of Nora’s reviews. The ones that people didn’t bother to mention, because they’re decent and written with integrity. I also read the article you wrote last Saturday.’

‘Is that what made you come?’

‘It’s what made me brave enough to come. If you could do that, admit you’d done some awful things that you regretted, refuse to make excuses for it, and only say that from now on you were determined to do things better, it made me hope that maybe you’d allow me to do the same.’

‘I still don’t understand why you think you did anything wrong… Daniel, I need to know that you’re not trying to shove what I did to one side or sweep it under the carpet. I’m not a perfect person. I’m a long, long way from that. Not least, I have borderline approval addiction. The compulsion to make people like me has caused me to be dishonest with myself, and other people, and while I’m working on it, I can’t promise it won’t ever happen again. I’m really bad at getting up in the morning and I have a hideous, lumpy scar on the back of my leg.’