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Something about him looked so tortured in that moment that Aneesa had to fight back the urge to put out her hand to touch him in comfort.

His head came up and his eyes speared hers. ‘But I’ve also been feeling alive, and connected, for the first time in my life.’

He stood tall again and Aneesa felt curiously weightless. He reached out a hand and curled it around her jaw, fingers around her neck under the heavy fall of her hair. She could feel a slight tremor in his hand and her heart tripped.

‘I never … wanted to create a family. I never wanted to marry. I never wanted to fall in love. I had no frame of reference for all of those things that most people aspire to, and take for granted. I’ve always been terrified that something of my father’s twisted genes was lying dormant in me and that basic happiness was something I could never have, as if I was jinxed in some way.

‘But seeing Nathaniel get married, and Jacob come home to try and make amends … seeing him come to terms with the past