“But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.”

“So you don’t fancy meeting up again?’ Max persisted, though Neve didn’t know why, because she thought she’d made her position perfectly clear. ‘Swap war stories?’‘I don’t have any war stories,’ Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she’d have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.‘If you don’t have any war stories, then at least you don’t have any war wounds,’ Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. ‘Take my number.”

“When I saw you on the stairs before, I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he whispered against her skin.‘Spotty, not beautiful,’ she corrected gently, running her finger along his crooked nose. ‘Now you, you’re beautiful.’‘I even missed your inferiority complex.’ Max smiled and shifted against her.‘Not being inferior. It’s a point of fact. I’m covered in zits,’ Neve said and she didn’t know why she felt the need to share that with Max but then she was glad that she had because he was kissing each one of the angry red bumps along her forehead and chin and cheeks, even though a few of them were starting to suppurate. ‘Don’t do that, it’s completely unhygienic. Kiss my mouth instead.”

“I sat there listening to him talk and talk and I realised something really important.I thought I was in love with him for all those years but it turned out I was in love with the idea of William. The actual reality was a bit of an anti-climax.I thought, well, William would never shove the word WAG into pop songs to make me laugh and he wouldn’t bite the chocolate off chocolate-covered strawberries for me and he’d never, ever watch a film with Sandra Bullock in it, unless it was a Shakespeare adaptation and then he’d spend the entire film listing all the historical inaccuracies and he’d never go down on me for half an hour because he’d lost a game of Scrabble. Point of fact, I can’t imagine William doing anything that would mess up his hair, and he’s started popping the collars of his shirts and have I mentioned that he’s not you? He’s not you, Max, and that’s why I’m actually really pleased that he’s engaged and he’s moving to Warwickshire so I don’t have a constant reminder of what an idiot I’ve been.”

“We don't stop, not even when we reach the finish line. It's a journey for life, Neve.”

“. . . Do you want to share a black cab?’Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn’t afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn’t the reason why she declined. ‘No, thank you. I’m perfectly all right with catching the tube.’‘OK, tube it is,’ Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn’t sense the huge ‘kindly bugger off’ vibes that Neve was sure she was emitting.”

“I’d think about you and how I didn’t want us to end. It’s complicated…’Max still held her, his thumbs stroking the spot on her wrists where her pulse was thundering away. ‘Uncomplicate it then. Did you miss me?’‘Of course I did! I’ve missed you so much, I hurt from it.’Then, and only then, did Max release her but it was only so Neve could wind her arms around his neck because they were kissing. She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but all of a sudden there was the familiar but shocking touch of lips on lips.”