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‘Why not?’

‘Your hands are enormous,’ I point out. ‘Can you even hold things that aren’t shaped like a rugby ball or a two-hundred-pound man?’

He laughs.

‘I’m good with my hands,’ he assures me.

My mind briefly goes somewhere deeply unhelpful. I drag it back.

Rachel has gone out to help close up the shop, while Lauren has taken Elsie upstairs to feed her. That leaves Eddy and me alone in the kitchen.

He moves around it with complete confidence – I’m stunned. How does this man keep surprising me? He reaches for bowls without looking, finds ingredients in cupboards, switches on the mixer and checks the oven. I’m not even sure he’s measuring everything. A lot of it seems like pure intuition, or memory perhaps.

‘You really do know what you’re doing,’ I say in disbelief.

He looks over his shoulder.

‘You thought they were lying?’

‘I thought they might be exaggerating.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re Eddy Hood,’ I say simply.

He slides a block of butter towards me. ‘Put that in the bowl.’

‘All of it?’ I check.

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t want me to measure it?’

‘It’s the right amount,’ he assures me.

I unwrap the butter and drop it into the mixing bowl.

This is actually sort of fun.

‘Could you see yourself working here?’ I ask him.

‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘I think my dad wanted me to take over running the place, when I retired from rugby, so he could retire from this. But Mum has been doing an amazing job.’

I am given the very important job of turning on the mixer, but I turn it up too quickly, causing a cloud of flour to emerge around us. Eddy laughs.

‘You have to be gentle, to bake,’ he tells me.

‘Another quality I didn’t think you could possess with muscles like that,’ I point out.

As I look at him, I notice some flour has settled on his face. I reach up without thinking and brush it from his eyebrow. Then I realise I’ve probably been staring into his eyes for a few seconds.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

‘That’s okay,’ he reassures me with a laugh.

His voice has changed though; it’s much softer. Maybe it’s something to do with being back home, like he’s relaxing.

Eventually, the cookies go in the oven.