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OK, I had to admit, I felt a tiny bit bad for him. I’d made assumptions of my own and had imagined him cruising through life looking the way he did, when actually it sounded like he’d had a difficult start. Maybe that explained why he gave romantic relationships a wide berth. Anyway, he might have struggled more than I thought, but that didn’t mean he could treat people however he liked.

I slowed my pace right down so that I was walking at anormal speed again, with Theo falling into step beside me. We passed a couple dumping their bags and towels on the beach. Both of them had swimsuits on and I admired them for braving the water, which looked dark and cold, and also thought they were crazy. It was much too dangerous to go in, if you asked me, but nobodywasasking, and perhaps it was different if you lived here and knew the tides or whatever. But then, as they approached the water, I noticed they seemed to be arguing about something. She was hurling her arms about in huge gestures and he was pacing up and down by the water’s edge. I thought that the only thing that could possibly make having a row with your partner worse was to have it while in your swimsuit in the dark. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them. That was the thing about being a writer, or maybe it was the other way round, the thing that had made me want to be a writer in the first place – I liked observing other people. I was nosy, basically, but also I liked trying to work out what was going on under the surface. It was difficult to see clearly, but from what I could tell, she wore the trousers in this relationship. He seemed to be pleading with her. She was using dismissive body language and I could practically see the rage boiling away inside her. I nudged Theo, who was looking a little uncomfortable but, like me, couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away. The two of us watched as the man strode into the water, wading in up to his waist and then throwing himself in the rest of the way, his arms curling into an angry front crawl. The woman grabbed her stuff and stomped past us, muttering under her breath in French. Wrapping a towel around her shoulders, she carried on up the beach without so much as a backwards glance.

Theo and I looked at each other.

‘Could that be a starting point for our book?’ I tentativelysuggested, raising my eyebrows. ‘A couple arguing on a beach. A married couple. We don’t know what they’re rowing about but it’s something serious. He goes into the water and she storms off.’

Theo crossed his arms looking pensive and I could practically hear his brain ticking over.

‘Imagine if he never comes back,’ he said, looking out in the direction of the man, who was now so far out he was barely visible.

‘And imagine if their marriage has been unravelling and he’s been keeping all these secrets from her. And she from him,’ I suggested.

Theo nodded. ‘We could be on to something here, you know.’

Relief surged through my body, possibly a little prematurely. After all, we might not be able to take the story any further. It might turn out to be too clichéd, or too predictable, or another of the phrases that was routinely bandied about by people on Goodreads, which I never went on anymore because some of the reviews of my books on there were savage and would make me cry and I hardly ever cried.

‘Shall we both go away and have a bit of a brainstorm?’ he suggested.

I shivered. It was probably time to head back anyway, and I wanted to get some of my thoughts down on paper while it was fresh in my mind.

‘Let’s do that,’ I agreed. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way, but do you think it’s best if we spend as little time together as possible? After all, once we’ve got our storyline, we can go off and work on it individually, can’t we? We don’t need to be in each other’s pockets. It’s probably best if we aren’t.’

I had to protect myself here – if we were really going todo this, it was important that we continued to be civil to one another. Which might prove difficult if we encroached on each other’s space – it was bad enough that we had to see each other at Melissa’s retreat activities.

Theo did his trademark loaded pause and I as usual began to overthink what I’d said. Did he think me callous? Cold-hearted? Difficult, for suggesting such a thing? Given his track record – i.e. women throwing themselves at him at every turn – he was probably finding it very hard to grasp the concept that I didn’t particularly want to spend time with him. Not for the first time I wondered about his relationship history since we’d seen each other last. Had he had something long-term, like I’d had with Jackson? Or had he, true to form, kept it casual? Maintained his reputation as a free spirit, a serial dater who you’d better not fall for because if he got wind that you had, he’d be off like a shot?

‘I think that’s probably for the best, yeah,’ he said after a minute.

‘Great,’ I replied.

‘Perfect,’ he said.

‘Head back?’ I suggested.

‘Yep,’ he said, striding ahead.

I scuttled along, struggling to keep up but secretly thrilled that we had the nugget of something. Up until now our book had been an abstract thought lurking at the back of my mind: could we come up with a killer idea? Would it work? And it still might not, but we had a starting point and we were on the same page with keeping our distance. So far this was working out better than I’d expected.

Back in my room, I opened my computer and wrote down everything that came into my head about the potential new story. As I was reading it through deciding if there was anything I could add, my phone rang. I picked it up, awaresuddenly that Theo must be at his computer next door because I could hear the muffled clacking of his fingers on the keyboard.

‘Hey, Dad.’

‘The carer hasn’t turned up.’

I pinched the top of my nose. What were they playing at? I’d double and triple checked that everything had been in place so that I could be assured that nothing like this would happen.

‘Sorry about that, Dad, they must have got in a muddle over timings.’

‘Well I’m starving. What am I supposed to eat?’

‘I’ll see if Kate can pop round if I can’t sort it out.’

My dad snorted. ‘That would be too much trouble for her, you watch. Anyway, I prefer your cooking.’

‘You’re the only one who does.’

For a start, I was always in a rush so I cut corners a lot, meaning I often didn’t bother measuring things, or whacked the oven up to piping hot when the recipe required a gentler approach. As a result, my food was often a little burned on top, or worst-case scenario, not properly cooked in the middle. Dad had never minded, but Zach had complained about it constantly when he was a kid. He’d moaned that his friends’ mums all cooked succulent roast chicken and squidgy homemade cookies and I’d tell him that I wasn’t his mum and that he was stuck with my cooking unless he’d like to have a go at doing it himself. That had usually shut him up.