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That made me smile. He’d made me smile when I’d just talked about my mum, and the two things never usually went together. I quietly appreciated his lack of fuss. It was as though he’d sensed that I neither needed nor wanted his sympathy, nor did I want an in-depth conversation about the whys or wherefores. He’d seen me and he’d understood, which was a surprisingly rare thing. Jackson had had a morbid obsession with death (that was literary authors, for you) and had asked me about my dead mother at every single fucking opportunity. I’d always responded by being sort of robotic with my answer. Going through the motions of telling himwhat he wanted to know, but not allowing myself to feel, to connect emotion to my story. And he’d got the details he’d needed, so all had been good. For him.

We left the darkness of the church and stepped back out into the sunlight, stopping briefly so that I could take a photo of a bronze statue of a naked woman that I liked.

‘I wish I’d known about your mum,’ he said. ‘Before, I mean.’

I fished my sunglasses out of my bag, putting them on. It felt too bright out here now.

‘It wouldn’t have changed anything, though, would it?’ I said, shocking myself, because it was the last thing I had expected to come out of my mouth.

‘Scarlett . . .’

Aaaaargh! Why had I said anything?!

‘Is there something you want to talk about?’ he asked, still being annoyingly calm.

I tucked my hair behind my ears, I put my phone back in my bag and then I dipped into it again to find my water bottle which I glugged at like a maniac. Anything to avoid looking at him, basically. Because the thing was, if I brought it up now, told him how hurt I’d been, there would be no going back. It would be out there in the universe. How I’d misread the signals and had got too invested – it would be utterly humiliating.

‘That came out wrong,’ I said.

He looked at me dubiously. ‘What did you mean, then?’

Oh, so now he wanted to probe. Not that morning, when it had actually been happening in real time and he hadn’t reached out to me. At all. But now, six years later, here he was, just gagging to have a conversation about it.

‘Look, can we please forget I said anything and focus on the task?’

He let out a sigh of exasperation, which in my opinion, he had no right to feel.

‘If it’s . . . difficult for you to work with me, why did you agree to it in the first place?’ he asked.

I crossed my arms defensively. ‘I’ve told you why already. I need the money to help my family. I’m the oldest, so when my mum died and my dad basically fell apart, I was the one who had to step up and carry everyone else. And even though they’re grown adults now, nothing much has changed.’

I swallowed, suddenly feeling a rush of sadness at having talked about something I’d barely admitted to anyone, ever. That it was a struggle to keep going sometimes. That I was a tiny bit resentful that I was stuck in this caring role and couldn’t seem to get out of it.

‘But you wish that all of that didn’t mean you had to write with me again?’ asked Theo, with a sprinkling of what sounded like disappointment but was probably just his ego shattering into a million pieces. I wondered if he thought it was partly the idea of writing alongside somebody as talented and successful as him again that had lured me over the channel to France.

‘Yes,’ I said, defiantly. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.’

He nodded. I felt bad, even though I shouldn’t. After all, it didn’t need to be like this. If he’d behaved differently all those years ago, we could have carried on writing together in the first place and wouldn’t be standing here now, desperately searching for the right words to say. Honest words, but not too honest, because we still had a book to write and if the truth all came spilling out, as it was threatening to do, then maybe we wouldn’t be able to manage it after all.

We stood in silence for what felt like far too long. It was like I was rooted to the spot. I needed to move, to change the mood. To get back to safer ground. Even Melissa’s taskfelt easy in comparison to this, although I supposed it was her instructions that had got us into this dangerous territory in the first place.

‘By the way, I hope you’re going to tell Melissa I deserve a gold star for all those earth-shattering revelations I just shared,’ I said, laughing lightly, desperate to get back to the easiness we’d had before. I should have trusted my instincts – hashing up the past was bad, and pointless. It was the future we should be thinking about.

‘Fancy grabbing a glass of wine while I attempt to keep up?’ asked Theo.

He pointed to a cute wine bar carved into a centuries-old brick building, with a couple of rickety looking chairs outside and a wine list chalked onto a piece of slate on the wall.

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

Alcohol. Alcohol was what was needed in this moment. A refreshing glass of something to cool the heat that seemed to be rushing to every part of my body.

But then he put his hand on my right side to guide me into the bar, pressing his palm into my waist, just for a second or two, but long enough for me to feel the aftermath of it pooling deep inside me as we sat down and I picked up the menu and I couldn’t focus on a single word.

Chapter Fifteen

I ordered a glass of chilled local rosé, the name of which I couldn’t entirely pronounce but which sounded romantic and floral and, well, pink. Theo went for a heady red. I thought that if I was going to describe him as a drink, it would be that: bold, spicy, robust. Impossible to ignore. Fills your mouth with – OK, I was taking thiswaytoo far!

‘Feel free to crack on with your task,’ I said, flustered.