There was only one thing to do. Gathering up a pile of logs, she began to stagger back to the front door. On the way the dressing gown fell open and she tripped over the belt, falling into the mud and taking the logs with her.

Cursing furiously, she got to her feet and surveyed the soaking logs, aided by the lightning that obligingly flashed at that moment.

‘Damn!’ she told the heavens. A blast of thunder drowned her out. ‘And the same to you!’

Suddenly Luca’s voice came from near by. ‘Becky, what are you doing out here?’

‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’ she demanded at the top of her voice. ‘Dancing the fandango? The lean-to came down and the wood’s getting even wetter than I am, which is saying a good deal.’

‘OK, I’ll fetch it in,’ he yelled back. ‘Go inside and get dry.’

‘Not while there’s wood to be moved.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘It’ll take too long for one person. It’ll be drenched.’

‘I said I’ll do it.’

‘Luca, I swear if you say that once more I’ll brain you.’

He ground his teeth. ‘I am only trying to take care of you.’

‘Then don’t! I haven’t asked you to. I’ll do the wood on my own.’

‘You will not do it on your own!’ He tore his hair. ‘While we’re arguing, it’s getting wet.’

‘Then let’s get on,’ she said through gritted teeth, and went back to the pile of logs before he could argue again.

They got about a quarter of the wood inside before he said, ‘That’s it. There’s enough there for a few days, and during that time we can bring some of the rest in and dry it out.’

‘All right,’ she said, glad to leave off now her point was made. ‘Come in and get yourself dry.’

They squelched back indoors, Luca slamming the van’s open door in passing with a force that showed his feelings.

Once inside, Rebecca lit some candles, then rooted inside a cupboard, glad that the one luxury she had allowed herself was a set of top-quality towels and two vast bathrobes. They were chosen to be too big, so that the occupant could snuggle deep inside, which was fortunate, or Luca could never have got into one.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he asked, sitting down and pulling the robe as far around him as he could.

‘Because I’m not a helpless little woman.’

‘Just a thoroughly awkward one,’ he grumbled.

‘Oh, hush up!’ She silenced him by tossing a hand towel over his head and beginning to rub, ignoring the noises that came from underneath.

‘What was that?’

He emerged from the towel, tousled and damp, and looking oddly young.

‘I said you should have knocked on the van door and woken me.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear the lean-to go down, the noise it made.’

But then she remembered that he had always slept heavily, sometimes with his head on her breast.

‘Well, I didn’t. It was mere chance that I woke up when I did. Otherwise, I suppose you’d have taken the whole lot indoors.’

‘No, I’d have been sensible and stopped after a few, like we did.’

He grunted.

‘And don’t grunt like that as though you couldn’t believe a word I say.’

‘I know you. You’d say anything to win an argument.’

She grinned. ‘Yes, I would. So don’t take me on.’

‘No, I’ve got the bruises from that, haven’t I?’ he asked wryly.

‘We’ve both got bruises,’ she reminded him. ‘Old and recent.’

He looked at her cautiously. ‘But you’re still speaking to me?’

‘No, I’m speaking to this man who turned up to mend the roof,’ she said lightly. ‘Good builders are hard to find.’

He gave a brief laugh. ‘My only honest skill.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ she said quietly.

She thought he might say something, but he only grabbed the towel and began rubbing his head again.

She made some tea and sandwiches and they ate in near silence. He seemed tired and abstracted, and she wondered if he was regretting that he had ever started this.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked suddenly, while he was drying his feet.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Where did you vanish to?’

‘Didn’t your enquiry agents tell you that?’

He grimaced an acknowledgement. ‘They traced you to Switzerland, then the trail went cold. I guess you meant it to.’

‘Sure. I knew you’d hire the best, and they’d check the airlines and the ferries, and anywhere where there was passport control. So I slipped across the Swiss-Italian border “unofficially”.’

He stared. ‘How?’

She smiled. ‘Never mind.’

‘As simple as that?’

‘As simple as that. Then I made all my journeys by train or bus, because if I’d hired a car I’d have left a trail.’

‘Is that why you have that incredible bike around the back?’

‘That’s right. I bought it for cash. No questions asked.’

‘I should think so. They must have been glad to get rid of it before it fell apart. What’s that thing at the back made of?’

‘You mean my trailer?’

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Certainly,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’m very proud of it. I just got some boxes and hammered them together. There was an old pram in the little barn behind the house and I took the wheels off. I’m sorry, I know they belong to you.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t ask for them back. If it’s the pram I think it is, it was collapsing anyway. In fact, it was collapsing when my parents got it. My father won it in a card game when my mother was expecting me, and I gather she made him sorry he was born. I can’t believe that you actually use it.’

‘I only go short distances to the village for supplies, food, logs, that sort of thing.’

‘You’ve brought logs back in that little box?’

‘I did once, but I put in too many and it fell apart. I had to come back here for a hammer and nails, then go back, put it together and finish the job. The logs were just where I’d left them.’

‘Of course. People around here are honest. But why didn’t you have the logs delivered?’

‘Because then people would have known for sure where I lived.’

‘What about hotels when you were travelling? Didn’t they ask to see your passport?’

She shrugged. ‘I pass as Italian. I’ve been all over the country, never staying anywhere for very long.’

He drew a long breath. ‘Of all the wily, conniving…! I thought I was a schemer, but I’ve got nothing on you.’

‘Pretty good, huh?’ she said with a touch of smiling cockiness.

‘You could teach me a thing or two,’ he said, grinning back at her.

But their smiles were forced, and faded almost at once.

‘I kept meaning to stop awhile in this place or that,’ Rebecca continued, ‘but I never felt I belonged in any of them. So I always moved on to the next place.’

‘Until you came here.’ He left the implication hanging in the air, but she did not pick it up.

At last he said quietly, ‘You were very determined to escape me, weren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

He didn’t answer, and she looked up to see his face in the flickering candlelight. It might have been the distorting effect of the little flames, but she thought she had never seen such a look of unbearable sadness.

He didn’t turn away or try to hide it, just sat regarding her with a look so naked and defenceless that it was as much as she could do not to reach out to him.

‘Luca…’ She didn’t mean to say his name, but it slipped out.

Then emotion overcame her and she covered her eyes, letting her head drop onto her arm on the table. She didn’t know what else to do. What she was feeling now was beyond tears: despair for the lost years, the chances that could never be recovered, the love that seemed to have died, leaving behind only desolation.

And if there was a hint of hope, it was of a muted kind. She might yet have his child, but it was too late for them.

She thought she felt a light touch on her hair, and perhaps her name was murmured very softly, but it was hard to be sure, and she did not look up. She didn’t want him to see her tears.

She heard him go to the stove and put in some more logs, then sit down again.

‘That will keep it going until morning,’ he said. ‘Go back to bed and keep warm.’

She looked up to see him near the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to the van. I’ll put some dry clothes on in there, and let you have the towels back tomorrow.’

‘No, wait!’

She hadn’t asked herself where he would sleep, but it seemed monstrous for him to have to return to his bleak conditions while she had all the comfort.

‘You can’t go back to the van,’ she said.

‘Of course I can. I’m quite happy there.’

She jumped up, arm outstretched to detain him, but stopped abruptly at the weakness that came over her. For a moment her head was fuzzy and the kitchen danced about her. Then the giddiness cleared.

She wasn’t sure whether he’d taken hold of her, or whether she was clinging to him, but they were gripping each other tightly and she was furious with herself. Now he would know.

She waited for his exclamation, the questions: why hadn’t she told him? And at the end of it all she would feel cornered and trapped.

‘Maybe you didn’t have enough for supper,’ he said. ‘Hauling logs about on an empty stomach. Shall I get you something?’

‘No, thank you,’ she said slowly.

‘Then you should go straight back to bed. Come on.’

He kept a firm but impersonal hold on her all the way into the bedroom, held her while she sat down on the bed, then tucked her in.

‘All right?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Luca.’

‘Let’s get some sleep for what’s left of the night. There’s another heavy day tomorrow.’

He closed the door quietly behind him, and after a moment she heard the front door also close.

The darkness held no answers. She tried to conjure up his eyes in that brief moment when he’d steadied her, and to read what she had seen there.