Belle, who’d hated the house from the minute she’d stepped over the threshold, hadn’t the faintest idea how hard it had been to let it go, but still, with a throat that ached and a heart like lead, Manda held her smile.

‘It would be a bit big for one.’ Then, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Manda…’

‘Now,’ she said, turning away and heading for the door before Belle did something stupid, like hug her. Before the tears stinging her eyelids spilled over and the ice cool image, the touch-me-not façade she’d built so carefully over the last few years cracked and she made a total fool of herself.

Nick Jago slid on to a stool and the barman, a leathery Australian whose yacht had been wrecked off the coast of Cordillera ten years earlier and had never found the energy to move on, poured him a small cup of thick black coffee and pushed it across the counter.

‘It’s a while since you were in town,’ he said.

‘I just came in to pick up my mail. There isn’t much else to tempt me into what passes for civilisation around here.’

‘Maybe not, but stuck out there by yourself you tend to miss the news.’ He produced a month-old copy of an English newspaper from beneath the counter. ‘I hung on to this for you.’

Jago glanced at the headlines of a tabloid that had the nerve to call itself a newspaper. Another politician caught with his pants down. Another family torn apart.

‘No, thanks, Rob,’ he said. ‘I’m not that desperate for something to read.’

‘Not that,’ he replied dismissively. ‘Inside. There’s a picture that I think’ll interest you.’

‘And you can keep your page three girls. Fliss will be back soon and I’d rather wait for the real thing.’

‘You sure about that?’

He shrugged. He was sure of nothing but death, taxes, and that her goodbye had been accompanied by a hot, lingering kiss that had been better than any promise. But Rob clearly knew something he didn’t.