‘I don’t think you’d enjoy my life that much,’ he told her. ‘It sounds as if you like the one you’ve got. You’ve got lots of friends, you seem to have a good time. You’ve got a job. Why give that up and leave your life behind to travel?’

‘Because I need to get away,’ said Imogen, her expression uncharacteristically serious.

Resting her arms on the table, she turned the glass pensively between her fingers. ‘I spent five years holding on to an impossible dream,’ she went on after a moment. ‘Five years wanting something I couldn’t have. I’ve finally accepted that it’s not going to happen, but I think I need a complete break to do something completely different before I can move on properly.’

‘Five years is a long time to want something-or was it someone?’

‘Someone.’ Imogen nodded.

Tom thought about what she had told him on the beach and searched his memory for a name. ‘Andrew?’

‘Andrew,’ she confirmed. ‘We were students together,’ she told Tom. ‘I fell in love with him the moment I laid eyes on him in Freshers’ Week and we were inseparable for three years.

‘I was so happy all that time,’ she remembered, her smile tinged with sadness. ‘It never occurred to me that it would end. I just assumed that, once we graduated, we’d get married and spend the rest of our lives together.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Tom.

‘Oh, nothing dramatic. Andrew just…grew out of me.’ Imogen managed a smile, but it was a painful one. ‘After all, we were very young when we met, just eighteen, and only twenty-one when we graduated. People kept asking me what I wanted to do, meaning that I should be thinking about a career, but all I wanted to do was be with Andrew. He was more ambitious. He wanted to be a journalist, and that’s what he did. He’s doing well, too. He’s just been made education correspondent on one of the national papers.’

‘And you didn’t blend with his décor any more, was that it?’

‘No, not really.’ It was second nature for Imogen to defend Andrew now. ‘Andrew realised that we wanted different things out of life. I was always happy to live in the moment, but he’s a planner and thinks about the future in a way I never did. I think he was feeling stifled too, although he didn’t put it like that.’

‘How did he put it?’

‘He said he thought we both needed a bit of space. We’d been living together for three years, after all, and neither of us had ever really spent any time on our own. He thought we should have a chance to meet other people before we settled down, and he was right. Twenty-one is much too young to tie yourself down for life-although I didn’t think so at the time, of course,’ she added with a wry smile.

Tom was trying to imagine Imogen as a student, and realised he could do it quite easily. She would have been exactly as she was now, he thought.

‘How did you react?’

‘With disbelief at first. Andrew wasn’t just my lover, he was my best friend. I couldn’t imagine life without him, and it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t feel the same. Then I decided that he was right,’ said Imogen. ‘It would be best if we had some time apart. So we both went to London, and he got himself a flat and I moved in with Amanda for a while as I was absolutely sure he’d come back. I did a secretarial course, got myself a job and waited for Andrew to miss me.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘No, he didn’t.’ Imogen sighed, remembering that time-the slow, sickening realisation that Andrew didn’t love her any more. ‘I know he’s very fond of me, and we’ve stayed friends, but he didn’t need me the way I needed him. I knew in my heart that it was over, but I kept hoping and hoping…’

Her mouth turned down at the memory of her own foolishness. ‘And then he met Sara, and it turned out that he needed her the way I needed him. They got married a couple of years ago, and they’re expecting their first baby in the summer.’

Even after all this time it was an effort to keep her voice level.

Tom could see the strain around her eyes and he shifted uncomfortably. He hoped that she wasn’t going to cry.

But Imogen was already straightening her shoulders and smiling.

‘Do you know the worst thing?’ she confided. ‘It’s that Sara’s really nice. She makes Andrew happy, and I can see they’re perfect for each other. When they got engaged, I used to pray that Andrew would wake up and realise that I was the one he really loved after all, a bit like Julia did with Patrick. I feel awful now to realise I never gave a thought to what that would have been like for Sara.’

Tom shrugged. ‘I guess she would have got over it, the way you did. The way I’m going to have to get over it.’

‘I hope it doesn’t take you as long as it did me,’ said Imogen ruefully. ‘I’ve wasted years, convinced that my life was always going to be empty without Andrew. I’ve tried to meet someone else, but I always end up comparing any man I go out with to him. It took me until last year to really accept that he loves Sara and not me. Even if he stopped loving her for some reason, he still wouldn’t love me.

‘It’s never going to be the way it was before,’ she said. ‘Andrew moved on a long time ago, and now I need to do that too. I haven’t changed since I was a student. It’s like I’m stuck in a time warp, where everyone else has moved on and grown up and I’ve just been drifting, hoping something will change. And, of course, I’ve realised that the only way something’s going to change is if I make it change. If I change myself.’

They had lit the candles on the table, and in the flickering light Tom could see the generous curve of her mouth and the unconsciously upward tilt of her chin. He found himself thinking that it would be a pity if she changed too much.

Imogen sighed a little. ‘Anyway, you know what it’s like,’ she told him. ‘I never got as far as planning a wedding, but I understand how it feels when you love someone who decides they don’t love you.’

Swirling the dregs of wine in his glass, Tom thought about what she had told him. Imogen always seemed so bright and cheery. He had never guessed that there was a sadness behind her smile.

‘I don’t feel like that about Julia,’ he said abruptly. ‘Not the way you felt about Andrew.’

‘But you were going to marry her,’ said Imogen. ‘You must have loved her. You must still love her.’

‘Must I?’

Tom’s eyes were fixed on the swirling wine, but he was remembering Julia. ‘I desired her, sure, but not with the kind of reckless passion that makes other people lose their heads and, as much as that, I admired her. I still do, I guess. I like her quick wits and cool competence, and I respect everything she’s achieved. She worked hard and made a real success of her life. But love her?’

Lifting his eyes to Imogen’s face, he shook his head. ‘No,’ he answered his own question. ‘No, I didn’t.’

She looked appalled, as if he had kicked away one of the cornerstones of her world, and Tom felt a twinge of remorse, which was ridiculous. ‘What?’ he said harshly. ‘You don’t really believe that you have to be in love to get married, do you?’

‘But…did Julia know you felt like that?’

‘Of course she did. We talked about it when we got engaged, and she said that she felt the same. That’s why I was so thrown when she made such a fuss about the wedding.’

Imogen was frowning in bafflement. ‘But why get married unless you did love each other? It seems pointless.’

‘You don’t think it’s possible to build a solid marriage based on mutual respect and admiration, and a healthy physical attraction?’

‘Maybe, but why would you want to?’ she countered. ‘I’ll only get married if I can find someone who makes me feel the way Andrew did. I want to marry someone I need and who needs me, someone who doesn’t think of marriage as a practical arrangement but about being with the one person who fills up all the bits that are missing, who believes that neither of us are complete somehow unless we’re together.’

Tom looked uncomprehending, and she tried to explain. ‘What’s the point of getting married unless you’ve found the person who makes your heart beat faster, who makes the sun seem brighter, who makes every moment sweeter just by existing? I want to go home at night and be with the one person who can make the rest of the world go away,’ she said, ‘the one person who, no matter how bad things are, can make it all right just by being there.’

‘But that’s exactly what I don’t want,’ said Tom, unimpressed. ‘I don’t want to need anyone else.’

‘You don’t want to fall in love?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Tom was very definite. ‘I’ve never felt what you felt for Andrew, and I’m glad. You’ve wasted five years of your life on him, Imogen. Five years! Think of all the things you could have been doing in those five years instead of yearning for the impossible. And knowing what it’s like to lose someone you’ve loved, you’re still prepared to risk all that again!’

He shook his head. ‘I’d rather have the kind of relationship I had with Julia,’ he said. ‘True, it ended in humiliation for me, and I can’t say I’m happy about it, but my pride is hurt more than my heart. It seems to me that when you fall in love, you lose your senses,’ he said. ‘You stop thinking clearly. You lose control.’

And that was something Tom Maddison never did.

‘Yes, it can make you feel powerless,’ Imogen had to admit, remembering how little she had been able to do to make Andrew change his mind. ‘You can’t make someone love you, that’s for sure. But it can also make you feel as if you can do anything, and that’s always going to be worth the risk.’

‘It’s not one I’ll be taking,’ said Tom flatly.

Imogen studied him, mystified. He was a powerful man, much stronger than anyone else she had ever met.