We sipped our drinks in miserable silence. I was a bit ahead of Christian, having knocked back a couple while he lingered with White Fang in the snowy wastelands of the frozen north, but I didn’t realise quite how drunk I was until I went over and sat next to him and aimed my mouth at his Clark Kent face.

He turned away and I ended up kissing the side of his head above his ear. I felt my face burning with alcohol and humiliation.

‘You really think we can just pick up where we left off, Tara?’

‘We can try, can’t we? What else can we do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I am yours and you are mine, Christian. And I’m sorry – so sorry! – to make you think that I’m not yours. But you’re my guy, Christian, and I love only you.’

He was unconvinced.

‘You are, you are, you are!’ I said, ploughing on, refusing to let him deny it. ‘I want to grow old with you – still. I want to spend my life with you – still. You saw me.’

He shook his head. He really didn’t know what I was talking about.

‘When we were young,’ I said, determined not to cry, not to soil the moment with tears. ‘When we were at the paper. You saw me for who I am, and you were the only one who saw me. Everyone else saw – I don’t know – some wild child. But you saw me and you loved me, Christian. I know you did! You can’t say you didn’t! You loved me!’

He looked at me. Say it, I thought. Go on, just say, I still do.

But he said nothing, and so I went on. ‘We have to stick together now, Christian. A lot of people want us to go down. That detective, DCI Stoner. That speccy bitch, his sidekick. The angry widow and the weird daughter. We have to face it – they all want to see us suffer. They don’t give a damn about Marlon.’

He sipped his drink as if Italian sparkling wine had no special meaning for us. But he was thinking, and I knew he was trying to get it right, and to say what he felt without rancour or regret or bitterness, and I loved him all the more for it, that we meant so much to him, that he wanted to get it right even if I had ruined it forever.

‘You were the one for me,’ he said quietly. ‘And there was never going to be anyone else for either of us.’ He stared at me. ‘But then there was.’

‘I know. And I’m—’

‘Stop telling me you’re sorry, will you?’

‘All right. Sorry. Ah! Sorry! But we’re not a couple, Christian. We’re a family. And we can’t just do what we want any more. Do you hear me? We’re not over.’

‘I’m not saying we’re over,’ he said. ‘Do you think I would ever leave Marlon? How could I ever do that?’