He looked blankly at me for a moment before answering. ‘No, Edie, not really,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘No one has ever described my diction as surly, or my posture as gangland, or questioned whether I’m actually as tall as I appear to be.’

He shook his head despairingly and I forced myself to pause and take a breath, conscious that my panicked attempts at an explanation were only making things worse.

‘Look, do you know what I thought you had done?’ I asked hesitantly. I wasn’t sure whether Alison had enlightened him, and I still had my doubts that putting him fully in the picture would make anything better, but I knew that continuing to acknowledge a mistake, without explaining what that mistake was and how it came to be made, wasn’t going to lay this to rest.

‘Kerry told me,’ he said.

‘OK. Good.’ I felt myself relax a little, confident that the information would at least have been imparted with an emphasis on forgiveness and moving on. In fact, I now strongly suspected that she might be the reason that we were sitting there having lunch. ‘She’s so lovely, isn’t she?’ I said.

‘She has a huge heart,’ he replied, the statement somehow all the more endearing for being delivered gruffly and with a slight awkwardness.

I gazed down at the sorry excuse for a muffin. ‘Well, I feel better that you know the background. I mean, I know it probably doesn’t make you feel great, and God knows it doesn’t reflect well on me.’

‘Yeah, well, some of all this doesn’t reflect well on me either,’ he said, now more weary than gruff. ‘Even if I couldn’t help the diction, I could’ve ditched the cynicism when you suggested a drink.’

‘That’s a very generous thing to say.’

He stared at his sandwich. ‘We need to start over.’

‘Oh, I would really love that,’ I said, aware of a hint of desperation from my voice.

He looked up and smiled a little sadly. ‘Let’s do that then,’ he said quietly.

He extended a hand across the table and I reached out and shook it, managing a small smile in return. Then we sat, each contemplating our unappetising plates of food, neither of us eating or speaking, but both, I assumed, feeling a little better than when we walked in.

After a moment, I cleared my throat and said, ‘I’m happy with my windows but, thinking ahead to another pitch, I do have an internal courtyard and a curving lightwell idea to show you.’

This time, his smile was broad and relaxed with interest. ‘Sure,’ he said, bending down to retrieve his laptop bag from the floor. ‘And after that, if you’re up for it and there’s time, I’ll show you some stained glass.’

Chapter 26