And moving back to Ellsborough had seemed a good opportunity to leave Nick and all the sad memories of her time with him behind too, she remembered, although she didn’t tell Ed that. His interest in her was purely professional. He wouldn’t care about her broken heart.

‘So you’re a local girl?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Yes. I couldn’t wait to leave Ellsborough for the bright lights when I was growing up, I have to admit, but it’s not so bad now. Bell Browning has been a good company to work for, and I can afford a much better standard of living in the north than I could in London. I’ve got a lovely flat and good friends…’ Perdita trailed off, uneasily aware that she sounded as if she were trying a little too hard to convince herself that she was perfectly happy there.

‘But you still miss the big city?’

‘Sometimes.’ Ed didn’t say anything, but there was a disbelieving quality to his silence and she glanced at him from under her hood. ‘OK, more than sometimes,’ she conceded. ‘I do like what I do at Bell Browning, but yes, I miss the excitement of the City. It’s not just the shops or the restaurants or the fact that there’s so much to do in London. It’s a kind of energy that you get day and night that you just don’t get in a small provincial city like Ellsborough.’

‘So you don’t regret your high-flying career?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said, ‘but we don’t always have a choice, do we? We can’t just walk away from our responsibilities, no matter how much we might wish that we could.’

Her mother had needed her, Nick hadn’t wanted her. At the time, it hadn’t seemed to Perdita that she had much option. Going back to Ellsborough had been the right decision, yes, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t regret the way things had turned out, did it?