“Good evening, Aidan. May I come in?”

In the train I had rehearsed the speech I would make to him. But now it sounded prim and spinsterish, as if I were an aunt addressing him in an I’m-determined-to-educate-you tone.

He gave one of his exaggerated stage bows. “By all means, madam.” He caught sight of my suitcase. “And you’ve come to stay! How positively de-licious!”

The spinster aunt vanished. “Shut up, Aidan, and help me with this, will you? I’ve had a long day and I’m exhausted.”

Grinning, he picked up the case. “Well, at the risk of offending madam, I must say you look it.” With his other hand, he pulled me into a small vestibule, from which rose a flight of polished wooden stairs. “This way.”

I went up first. As the front door crashed closed behind me, something like the fear I had felt in the hotel room overwhelmed me. We were only halfway up, but my legs failed. I stopped and turned helplessly to Aidan, whose bemused expression immediately changed. “Clara, whatever has happened? You look …” – his eyes roamed my face – “has someone hurt you?”

He was a blur. I do not know if it was tears or faintness that dissolved my image of him, but I could no longer support myself. I had escaped from the hotel, found Brighton Station, caught the right train, taken a taxi and arrived at 23 Raleigh Court, fired by determination not to allow David’s betrayal to defeat me and by my habit of imagining I was someone else, in this case a taxi driver. But now that I had caught hold of a lifebelt – Aidan was at least familiar, and he was here – I suddenly found myself nearer than ever to drowning.

Aidan caught me around my shoulders and lowered me to a stair, where he sat beside me while I wept. The weeping became howling, and still he sat there calmly, comforting me with soft murmurs as one would a child, tolerating my shoulder-shaking sobs and dripping nose. When the flood lessened, he took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my face while I hiccupped and sniffed. “Oh, dear …” I blurted apologetically, “what must I look like?”

“You look like a girl who’s been badly hurt by some heartless bounder,” he said. “And I’m pretty damned sure I know who. Now come in and make yourself comfortable.”