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I glanced up. ‘Is she a whore?’ I gasped hopefully. ‘Does she sleep around?’

He threw back his head and barked out a laugh. ‘No, I don't think so. Not that I noticed. But then, maybe I wouldn't.’

‘Why not? She's gorgeous, isn't she? And single. Are you married? Not that that appears to matter,’ I added bitterly, aware I was flying now, my sails full, anchor adrift, all moorings gone, despair emboldening me.

He smiled. ‘I'm not married. I was.’

‘Divorced?’

‘Widowed.’

‘Oh.’

The wind changed, the boom came over with a mighty smack of canvas, and my boat tacked and rocked.

‘Oh,’ I said again as I rootled around for something better. That put my petty problems into perspective, didn't it? At least all the people I was angsting about were alive.

‘I'm so sorry. Really.’

‘Thank you.’

A silence ensued. He was standing in front of the counter, and I was behind it. His head was bent and he still had his hands in his pockets. His averted gaze gave me the advantage. His legs were long and slim. Good legs, actually. I ran my eyes up them.

‘Here, why don't you…?’ I swung the other chair behind the counter around to face him.

‘Oh. Thanks.’ He came and sat beside me. Another silence.

‘D'you mind me asking… I mean, how did she…?’

‘She was killed by sniper fire in Uzbekistan.’

‘Good God. A soldier?’ A rather butch woman running around in khaki trousers and brandishing a Kalashnikov sprang to mind.

‘No, a photographer. War photographer. For a newspaper. Le Figaro. She was French.’

‘Gosh. How brave. You mean… in a flak jacket?’ Now she was whippet thin with high cheekbones and long flowing hair. Or was that Bella Edgeworth? I shook my head confused. ‘Like Kate Adie? Dodging bullets?’

‘Or not, as the case may be. But actually, that was me. I mean, I was Kate Adie, the reporter. But she did have a flak jacket, for all the good it did her. Anyway, that's how we met.’

‘Oh my God, how romantic. So how come—’

‘I'm running a bookshop?’ He shrugged. ‘I don't know. I carried on reporting for a year or so after Estelle died, but then I didn't really have the stomach for it. Or the guts, maybe. Thought if I saw another teenage Iraqi boy shot as he threw a stone, or another truckload of young British soldiers ambushed and blown up by grenades, I'd jump on a grenade myself. I think you have a certain shelf life as a foreign reporter, if you're going to be any good, and I'd come to the end of mine. I'd done fifteen years. Estelle was dead. Time to move on. Leave it to the young and the unembittered. Running a bookshop had always appealed.’

‘Very different,’ I ventured.

He shrugged. ‘I like books.’

‘Me too. It's what I used to do. I mean, work here. With Malcolm. Years ago.’

He looked surprised. ‘I didn't know that.’

‘No reason why you should.’ I regarded him, sitting beside me, long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle. He seemed intent on his shoes. Funny, I'd always thought him arrogant. Maybe shy. It was very quiet.

‘Don't you miss… being abroad? In Afghani… Paki…’

‘Sorry?’

‘The stan place. One of the stans.’ What, like one of the shires, Evie?’

‘Uzbekistan?’

‘That's the one.’ I flushed.

‘You mean, do I miss the action?’

‘I believe I do.’

‘Sometimes. But it's her I miss. Estelle. And it wouldn't be the same. Wasn't the same, reporting without her. Not seeing her face in the pack of photographers as they rolled into town.’

I gulped. He had a way of telling it like it was. Painting a picture. Reporting, I suppose. Telling the truth. Which was what he did. Or had done. I imagined him, camped out in the top floor of some deserted building, scanning the dusty streets of a Middle Eastern town as more trucks arrived in a convoy, looking out for the one she'd be in, with her French crew. Making sure she'd made it.

‘Had you been married long?’

‘Five years.’

‘Children?’

‘No. The lifestyle wasn't conducive to children. Wasn't fair. We wanted them, though. Estelle was twelve years younger than me, so we had a bit of time. But when she died… well, she was