‘I’m at home, if you want to come round now.’ I’d forgotten the college had closed for the Christmas holidays, and hadn’t expected Rufus to answer his phone. I’d planned to leave a message telling him to expect a visit from me later on, and felt myself floundering for something to say. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said. Confusingly, he was using what I’d come to recognise as his ‘sex’ voice.

‘I’ve seen the paint, Rufus. Gwen wanted to call the police.’

‘Oh, Christ, Tilda—’

‘It’s Tilly.’

‘Tilly, please don’t call the police—’

‘So it was you.’ My stomach sank. Up until then, I hadn’t really believed it.

‘Well, obviously.’ That threw me. ‘Unless you’ve been seeing someone I don’t know about.’

‘Of course I haven’t.’

‘Look, after our little chat, I wanted you know how strongly I feel about you,’ he said. What? ‘It probably wasn’t the best way to go about it, but I knew you’d see it when you got there this morning, and that you might…’ His words faded. ‘I thought you might be calling to tell me you felt the same way.’

‘The same way as what?’

‘As I do about you.’

I struggled to make sense of his words. ‘You smeared leftover paint from your dining room on the windows at the café, to tell me how you feel?’ In that case, he must hate me.

‘Of course I didn’t smear it.’ He sounded hurt. ‘I know it sounds a bit soppy, and it’s not really you, but I still think we have a strong connection even if you won’t admit it.’

‘And that’s why you chucked paint at the windows?’

‘What? Why would I do that?’ His tone sharpened. ‘That would be vandalism.’

‘Graffiti is an act of vandalism,’ I said.

‘Not when it’s a declaration of love.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I painted I love you Matilda Campbell about twenty times, and loads of love hearts.’

Sounds of the café rushed in as I stared into my almost empty cup, letting his words settle. I’d taken Gwen’s advice to have a hot chocolate, before calling him. ‘I’m going to send you a photo.’

I texted Rufus the picture I’d taken, and when I brought my phone back to my ear I heard him groaning like a man who’d been given twenty-four hours to live. ‘It wasn’t raining when I went up there, but it must have started again in the early hours,’ he said. ‘Tilly, I’m so sorry, that wasn’t at all what you were meant to see.’

‘So, you didn’t mean to make that awful mess?’

‘Of course I didn’t. What do you take me for?’

‘I didn’t think you would, but when I recognised the paint—’

‘You recognised my paint?’ He sounded as pleased as if I’d announced I wanted to have his babies, and when he added, ‘Look, come round and let’s talk properly. I bought some of that tomato and herb sourdough you like from the bakery over there,’ I found myself agreeing.

‘I feel terrible that you ended up cleaning the paint off, not realising it was a message,’ Rufus said, fifteen minutes later, when I’d plonked myself on his distressed leather sofa with a plate of toasted sourdough. ‘I really didn’t think it through, did I?’

He looked so tormented, I assured him it was fine, trying to picture him creeping up to the café in the dark and cold, with his tin of paint and a brush. It seemed so… extreme. No one had ever done anything like it in my name, and I couldn’t work out what I felt.

‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘I’m over it.’

He instantly brightened, and endearingly said, ‘Help yourself to cheese and olives.’ He indicated the spread on the glass-topped coffee table, which he must have either laid on while I was driving over, or earlier, when he was anticipating me calling to express joy at his artistic endeavours. ‘I know you like the strong stuff, so I got some Stinking Bishop.’

‘Lovely,’ I said, though I’d only professed a liking for strong cheese because Rufus did, and it had seemed to be a grown-up thing to like. I actually preferred mild cheddar, and The Laughing Cow cheese triangles, which tasted great on crackers. ‘I might have some later.’

‘So, you haven’t changed your mind about the wedding on Saturday?’ He seemed to be holding his breath.

‘No,’ I said, popping an olive in my mouth. I was starving. ‘I told you, my word is my bond.’

‘Great!’ Before I could work out what was happening, Rufus had flumped beside me, holding an open laptop. ‘Here she is!’ On the screen was a man with a hulking frame and a luxuriant ginger beard, squinting at the image of us that had popped up in the corner. ‘This is my brother, Grant,’ said Rufus, tossing an arm around my shoulder and pulling me close so that I tilted sideways, spilling my bread on the floor. ‘He wants to say hello.’

‘Hey!’ The man lifted a hand in a friendly wave. ‘You weren’t lying, bro’, she’s gorgeous.’

He was Skyping his brother? Swallowing my olive whole, I tried to pull away, but Rufus was strong from his hours in the gym and had an iron grip.

‘I told you,’ he said, a note of triumph in his voice, and I didn’t know whether to be flattered or furious that he’d gone to such lengths to show me off to his brother without warning. ‘She’s definitely real!’ He was grinning, but an undercurrent in his voice suggested years of competition with his brother, who was younger and better looking (from what I could see under the beard), with smiling eyes, and a head of red-gold hair that probably drove Rufus mad with jealousy. ‘She’ll be at the wedding on Saturday and you can meet her for yourself.’

‘I’ll look forward to that,’ said Grant, his friendly face looming large. ‘It’s good to meet you, Matilda.’

Rufus shifted slightly and I managed to move away, reconstructing my face into a pleasant smile. ‘Good to meet you too,’ I said politely.

‘Have you sorted out your best man’s speech yet?’ Grant’s eyes swivelled back to his brother.

‘Oh yes,’ said Rufus, and I remembered him saying something about having a few anecdotes up his sleeve to embarrass his brother with on the big day.

‘Anything you’d care to share?’ Grant’s tone was lightly teasing.

‘That you wet the bed until you were twelve?’ Rufus winked at me. ‘I wouldn’t be that cruel, mate.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’ Clearly, Grant hadn’t spotted the wink. ‘Although it’s no secret that I had a weak bladder that had to be fixed in my teens.’ I loved how matter-of-fact he was about it.

Rufus clearly wasn’t on the same wavelength. ‘Right,’ he said in an exaggerated way that meant he thought Grant was lying. ‘Good job I won’t be mentioning it then.’ He tried to nudge me playfully, but I’d moved too far away.

‘Well, I’d better be off,’ said Grant, glancing at his watch. ‘Good to talk to you, Roof.’ He sounded completely genuine.

‘See you Saturday.’ Rufus’s voice was loaded with meaning, and not in a good way. Did he even like his brother?

‘Nice to meet you, Matilda,’ said Grant, his gaze meeting mine once more, and I thought I saw something like pity in his eyes – unless it was a trick of the light. ‘Don’t take any nonsense from my brother. He can be a bit—’ Rufus slammed the screen shut.

‘He’s an idiot,’ he muttered, his expression unusually sullen. It was suddenly easy to see the twelve-year-old boy he’d once been, and I felt a burst of pity. There was obviously a lot of history between him and his brother that I didn’t know about, but I could relate to having a difficult sibling relationship. ‘Just because he saved Dad’s life once, and went on to become a heart surgeon, and runs marathons for charity, and is marrying the daughter of a woman he brought back to life on a flight to New York and is adopting her two children, it doesn’t make him better than me.’

‘I didn’t realise your brother was a heart surgeon, he looks—’

‘Like a trucker, I know,’ Rufus said, though I’d been about to say a friendly lumberjack. ‘He loves the element of surprise when people meet him for the first time.’ Or, he’s just comfortable in his own skin. ‘I could have been a doctor, only I’m not very good with blood, but he looks down on me for being a teacher.’

I wasn’t sure that was true and couldn’t believe that Rufus hadn’t mentioned any of this while we’d been seeing each other – then again, he’d probably been presenting his best side. He was obviously a mass of insecurities, at least where his brother was concerned. ‘Being a teacher’s amazing,’ I said, bending to pick my bread off the oatmeal carpet. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

‘No, but you don’t like working. It’s one of the things I like about you,’ he added, when I opened my mouth to protest. ‘I love the idea of coming home to find a gorgeous woman in my kitchen. Or bedroom,’ he blustered, when I opened my mouth again. ‘Or anywhere in the house.’ He must have sensed my protests were reaching bursting point. ‘What I’m saying is, Tilly, that I want you in my life.’

‘Let’s just start with the wedding,’ I said, before he dug himself in any deeper.

‘Is that a proposal?’ One of his sandy eyebrows twitched, and I realised he’d made a joke – the first since we’d met.

Biting back the words absolutely not, I smiled and said, ‘Nice one, Roo.’ I meant the nickname ironically, but his cheeks pinked with pleasure.

‘Keep saying it until it catches on.’ He leaned over and grasped my hand. ‘What do you think of the decorations?’

I looked around his orderly living room, with its matching pale-wood furniture and fake-coal fire, and the giant television he liked to watch rugby and cricket on, and noticed he’d draped garlands of gold tinsel around everything, in a rather desultory fashion. There was a Christmas tree in front of the window, precisely arranged with red and gold baubles, as if it had sprung out of the box already decorated. Which it probably had, if the tinsel arrangements were anything to go by.

‘It’s… nice,’ I said, unable to summon a more enthusiastic description.

‘I know it won’t meet your design standards,’ he said with a chuckle, squeezing my fingers. ‘You have my permission to work your magic here, any time you like.’

‘Oh no, you’ve… honestly, you’ve done a good job,’ I assured him, spotting a pair of beady-eyed elves, sitting on the bookshelf. ‘The way people decorate reflects their personalities, and I like that.’ I couldn’t tear my gaze from the grinning elves.

‘They came out every year when we were kids,’ he said, following my line of vision. ‘Jollybum and Merrybottom.’ His laugh was tinged with nostalgia. ‘Grant wanted to call them KITT and Goliath, from Knight Rider, but I cried so much that Mum let me have my own way.’

His brother had obviously been the cool one, but I could hardly say so. ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet him today.’ I disentangled our fingers. ‘You should have warned me, Rufus.’

‘I thought you’d like the element of surprise.’ Based on what, I wasn’t sure, but it barely seemed worth protesting when he clearly hadn’t meant any harm. ‘Listen, we’re going to have a great time.’

‘Does it really mean that much to you?’ Bridget had married her Frenchman in secret – a spur-of-the-moment union with two strangers as witnesses – and although Mum had cried when she found out, presumably at having missed her firstborn’s wedding, I’d been curiously ambivalent. Maybe because I’d known what he was really like, but Rufus seemed almost fanatical about attending his brother’s nuptials… with me.

‘It really does.’ He placed his laptop on the cushion beside him and shuffled round to face me. ‘I can’t wait for everyone to meet you.’

I studied his sensitive features, and tried to imagine meeting his family, and what they would make of me. Would they see me as a suitable match – as my grandmother would have said – for their youngest son, or were they secretly hoping he’d bring someone more… sensible? Another teacher, perhaps, or a nice nurse? Perhaps they’d be disappointed that I was taller than him. ‘I’m looking forward to it, too,’ I said brightly, hoping they were all as nice as Grant had appeared to be.

‘I saw you, you know.’

‘Saw me?’

‘Save that boy from drowning,’ Rufus said unexpectedly. ‘I heard you shouting on my way to the car park, and when I looked round you were running towards the sea. There was a mongrel on the beach,’ I remembered he didn’t like dogs, ‘and a boy in the water, and I realised you were going to save him.’ His face came alive, as if he was describing the plot of a film he’d seen and loved. ‘You were amazing, Tilly. I think I knew then that I was going to have to work very hard to keep you.’

Ignoring the last bit, I said, ‘Did you call for help?’

‘What?’ His gaze refocused. ‘Help?’

‘The coastguard, an ambulance?’

He drew his head back. ‘I didn’t need to,’ he said. ‘You’d obviously got things perfectly under control.’

‘But, what if I hadn’t?’

‘Well, obviously I would have called for help if you’d been struggling, but do you know how much it costs to mount a rescue?’ He’d turned a bit huffy, and his cheeks reddened. ‘They wouldn’t have thanked me for calling them out, only to get there and find they weren’t needed,’ he said. ‘That man seemed very grateful. Was it his dad?’

‘How long were you watching?’

‘I saw him hugging you.’ Was that what had prompted this outpouring of… I couldn’t call it love. Was it love? I had nothing to compare it with, but it didn’t feel like love.

‘He was very grateful,’ I said.

‘I should have called the local paper.’ Rufus became enthused. ‘I still could,’ he said. ‘You deserve a bravery award for what you did.’

‘Please don’t.’ Seth would hate that. ‘I don’t want an award.’

‘My students would be impressed.’ The uncharitable thought that he wanted to bask in some reflected glory popped into my head, and I felt instantly guilty when he added, ‘You’d be a good role model for them.’

‘I really don’t want you to.’ I spoke more sharply than I’d intended, unsure why I didn’t just tell him the man was Seth Donovan. I had a feeling if I did, he might want me to introduce them. ‘Promise me you won’t.’

‘I promise,’ he said sincerely. ‘You’re too modest though, Tilly.’

‘Listen, I’ve got to go.’ I stood up, suddenly keen to escape the over-heated room and Rufus’s puppy-dog eyes. A puppy-dog who was a bit over-excited and looked like he might bite me. ‘I have to, er…’ Luckily, my phone obliged by ringing. ‘I have to get this, I’m expecting a call about the café.’

Phone pressed to my ear, I gave Rufus a distracted smile and hurried out, leaving him standing awkwardly in his living room, a hand outstretched as if to restrain me.

‘I’ve had a call!’

‘Bridget?’

‘Seth Donovan rang me this morning.’ She sounded oddly breathless. ‘He’s taking me out for dinner this evening, and I need you to help me find something to wear.’