‘Yes, I have. It took time to set up today.’

‘I’m sure there must have been a lot of planning,’ he said in a bleak voice. ‘Booking the day, hiring the car to drive you down there, leaving the flat secretly, not telling me where you were going-that took some organising. When I found your note I checked up on Ken’s firm and discovered that you had a booking.’

‘So you jumped into your car and came down to tell me that I mustn’t dive because I didn’t have your permission?’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘Because it isn’t safe for you.’

‘It’s as safe for me as for anyone. I was on a line. Ken could have hauled me in at any time.’

‘You went behind my back,’ he said harshly.

The bitterness in his voice dulled the edge of her anger, reminding her how easy it was to hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt him, She wanted to love him as she’d done in their first carefree days; days that she knew would never come again.

‘You don’t give me any choice,’ she cried. ‘I had to do it without telling you because you’d have made such a fuss. You always do that if I try to do anything a little bit unusual.’

‘A little bit?’ he echoed. ‘You were scuba diving.’

‘Yes, and I managed perfectly well. As I knew I would. But you can’t bring yourself to believe that, can you? Sometimes I think you actually hate it when I manage to do something without you.’

‘For God’s sake, do you know what you’re saying?’

‘Yes, I’m saying I want to live my life as an adult, without having to apply to you for permission to take every breath.’

‘I’m only trying to keep you safe.’

‘I don’t want to be safe. I want the freedom to take the same risks as other people, and before I met you I had it. I loved it. But you set yourself to take it away from me, wrap me in cotton wool and lock me in a cocoon. I can’t live in there, Francesco, not even if you’re there with me. It’s like a prison, and I have to break out.’