‘What is this?’ Kate demanded at last. ‘Some kind of consolation prize? Jake Harvey wasn’t interested in me but never mind, you’re prepared to step into the breach?’

Another flash of lightning crackled across the sky, followed almost at once by an ear-splitting crash of thunder. The storm was directly overhead now.

‘I thought Jake was interested,’ said Dexter.

‘Oh, he was. For one night only. As soon as he’d got what he wanted,’ Kate was defensive, ‘the novelty wore off.’

‘Good,’ Dexter said bluntly. ‘I’m glad. His loss.’

‘Look, you really don’t have to say all this stuff. I’m not a child.’

‘I’m doubly glad to hear that. Can I tell you something?’

‘Could I stop you?’ Kate retaliated, and although her tone was brisk, Dexter saw that her hands were trembling. Whether that was a good or a bad sign was anybody’s guess.

‘It was you who made me realise Nuala and I had no future.’ Dexter came straight to the point.

‘We were a disaster together. We brought out the worst in each other. But you’re the complete opposite of Nuala. The first time I saw you, I thought you were fantastic. Unique. I remember wishing Nuala could be more like you, except of course she can’t, because she just isn’t. But I knew I’d never felt like this about anyone before. That’s why I let Nuala finish with me.’ Dexter paused and raked his fingers through his hair. ‘So there you are. Now you know.’

OK. Here came the downright scary bit.

‘I don’t believe you.’ Kate was staring at him as if he’d just grown an extra head. ‘You’re making it up.’

Dexter rubbed the faint growth of dark stubble on his chin. ‘Trust me, I don’t have the imagination to make up something like this.’

Her tone accusing, Kate said, ‘If it was true, you’d have said something before now. I mean, why wouldn’t you?’

‘You weren’t ready to hear it. Plus, I’m a man,’ Dexter amended. ‘We don’t just go around blurting this stuff out, you know. It’s not the easiest thing to do. We have to be pretty desperate.’

Rain was rattling the windows; it sounded as though shovel-loads of gravel were being hurled dementedly at the glass.

‘But ... but you’re so rude to me,’ stammered Kate.

‘So? You’re rude to me too. But I don’t say the kind of things I used to say to Nuala.’ Dexter shook his head to emphasise his point. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Not with you.’

Kate was gazing anxiously into her empty brandy glass. ‘I could do with another refill.’

‘Forget it, you’d only fall off your stool. Anyway,’ said Dexter, ‘if I can get through this sober, so can you.’

Kate’s foot was jiggling away again. She didn’t speak.

‘Look,’ Dexter ploughed on, ‘I’m never going to be Mr Sweetness and Light, that’s just not the way I am. Who’s that Irish fellow on breakfast TV, the cheery chubby one all the housewives love?’

‘Eamonn,’ said Kate.

‘That’s the one. Makes me want to chuck a brick through the TV.’

‘Probably because he has more hair than you.’

‘I’m just saying, we’re not alike. Joky and jovial is not who I am. If I think someone’s an idiot, I’ll let them know. But that’s life, isn’t it? We all have our own characters. We’re drawn to different people. I was drawn to you that first night you came into this pub with your mother,’ said Dexter. ‘There you were, scowling, snarling and glowering like the wicked witch in a pantomime, refusing to so much as look at anyone. The next thing I knew, you’d had a showdown with Maddy in the ladies’ loo, hurled a couple of insults at Nuala and stormed out. Everyone else in the pub was stunned,’ he reminisced with a crooked smile. ‘I just thought wow, that’s the girl for me.’

This was too much for Kate. Sliding jerkily off her stool, she made her way to the other side of the bar, where Dexter was standing. Reaching past him, she grabbed the cognac bottle by the neck, headed back to her stool and sat down again.

‘So you’ve really been thinking that?’ Carefully she double-checked. ‘All this time?’

‘I have.’ Dexter nodded.

Talk about a surreal situation. Kate’s hand went up to the damaged side of her face.

Defensively she said, ‘What about this?’

‘I love your scars. They’re my favourite part of you. I’m a pretty selfish person,’ said Dexter.

‘From my point of view, I’m glad you’ve got them. Let’s be brutally honest here,’ he went on. ‘If you didn’t have them, you wouldn’t look at me twice. I wouldn’t stand a chance.’

Kate felt as if she’d been slapped. Outraged, she retorted, ‘What makes you think you stand a chance now?’

‘Oh, come on, I’m not completely stupid. I’ve seen the way you look at me.’ Dexter was on the brink of smiling now. ‘You can’t tell me there isn’t a spark of interest.’

Kate’s eyes widened. Indignantly she said, ‘A spark?’

‘ OK, not a spark. Maybe spark’s too strong a word. We’ll call it a flicker,’ said Dexter. ‘There’s definitely been a flicker.’

The cheek of it. Well, maybe he did have sexy eyes, but she’d never shared this thought with another living soul.

‘You’re mad.’ Kate hadn’t realised her foot was jiggling again, but seeing as her shoe had just flown over the bar, it seemed likely that it had been. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’ve wondered what it would be like to kiss me,’ said Dexter.

‘I have not!’

‘Yes you have, you know you have. I’ve been completely honest with you,’ he chided. ‘The least you can do is be honest with me.’

‘You’ve been a bit too honest.’ Touching the left side of her face again, Kate said, ‘You’re glad I’ve got these scars because now that I look like this, nobody else would want me? That’s sick.’

‘It isn’t. I’m not looking at it that way. Before your accident, what kind of men did you go out with? Good-looking ones, am I right? You wouldn’t have considered anything less,’ Dexter said seriously. ‘But less attractive men can have just as good personalities as film-star-handsome ones. Better personalities, in fact, because they have to make more of an effort. That’s all I’m saying,’ he concluded. ‘Thanks to your accident, you have the opportunity to find that out for yourself. And you never know, in the long run you may be glad you did.’

Kate wondered if he was deluded.

‘But you don’t make more of an effort. You make no effort at all! And you certainly don’t have a great personality!’

There was a hint of a glint in Dexter’s eyes. ‘No? You still want to know what it’d be like to kiss me though. Actually, that’s another part of me that’s not too bad. If I say so myself, I have quite a nice mouth.’

Kate looked at him. For several seconds she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Then she climbed down from her stool, made her way to Dexter’s side of the bar and retrieved her flung-off shoe. Finally, having gathered together her blue jacket and handbag, she said stiffly, ‘I’m going home.’

Dexter hung his head. ‘OK.’

Wrenching open the front door, Kate stepped outside the pub and shuddered as the full force of the storm almost knocked her off her feet. The wind was so strong she had to lean into it, cartoon-style, in order not to be sent cartwheeling backwards like tumbleweed.

She crossed Main Street, headed past the workshops and made her way up Gypsy Lane, grimly ignoring the rain pelting every inch of her body, soaking through her clothes all the way to her knickers and undoubtedly power-blasting the carefully applied make-up from her face.

Oh well, what did that matter now?

Reaching the entrance to Dauncey House, Kate paused and took the front door key from her waterlogged bag. She looked at it, sighed, then dropped the key back into the bag and turned round.

‘Oh bloody hell, not you again,’ said Dexter.

But not in a bad way.

‘You don’t scare me.’ Kate moved across the flagstoned floor, trailing a small river in her wake.

Blinking rain from her eyelashes, she came to stand directly in front of him.

‘Don’t I? You scare the bejesus out of me,’ said Dexter.

‘Just one kiss,’ Kate told him, ‘to see what it’s like.’

Dexter nodded seriously. ‘Absolutely. That’s it. Just one kiss.: Chapter 47

Juliet listened to everything the consultant was telling her. When he’d finished, she burst into floods of tears.

‘No need to cry, Miss Price. It’s good news.’ The consultant was smiling broadly.

Oliver, relieved and delighted, enthusiastically shook the consultant’s hand. ‘Fantastic. Excellent news. We’re so grateful.’ Glancing at Juliet’s tear-stained face, he added in bafflement, ‘I’ll never understand women. Not as long as I live.’

‘Sometimes,’ the consultant said happily as Juliet flung her arms round him and kissed him on both cheeks, ‘I don’t mind not understanding them.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Juliet sobbed, all the pent-up emotions of the last week exploding out of her like a burst dam. ‘I was so scared, I thought he was going to ... to ... oh, thank you so much, you don’t know what this means to me ...’

‘No need to thank me,’ the consultant assured her. ‘Tiff’s the one who did the hard work.

Children have the most astonishing powers of recovery. You never give up hope. It couldn’t happen this fast with an adult, trust me. But these youngsters, one minute they’re so ill you can’t imagine they’ll survive, and hours later they can be sitting up in bed demanding pizza and a Gameboy.’

Juliet wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve. Tiff hadn’t reached the pizza and Gameboy stage yet, but he had regained consciousness and was still recognisably Tiff. The consultant, sweeping into the ITU, had informed them that the results of the latest blood test, lumbar puncture and brain scan showed that Tiff was off the danger list. His body had escaped the devastation of rampant septicaemia. He hadn’t sustained brain damage. It was the miracle Juliet hadn’t dared to hope for.