Tania Hale saw her ex-boyfriend beside the supermarket tomatoes, and for one terrible second, she forgot what she had come in to buy.

The list was on her phone. Lemons. Greek yoghurt. Pasta. Dishwasher tablets. Something green, because her sister Maya had recently declared that Tania’s fridge looked “like a bachelor’s regret.” But the words blurred as Tania stood near the entrance of Albright Market, one hand still curled around the handle of a wire basket, her Sunday morning confidence dissolving under the fluorescent lights.

Daniel Crowe was comparing cherry tomatoes with the same concentrated frown he wore when choosing wine. He still had that navy wool coat, too expensive for a man who claimed not to care about appearances. His hair was shorter now. His shoulders, somehow, looked both familiar and strange.

And beside him stood a woman in cream trainers, laughing at something he had said.

Tania’s first instinct was to leave.

She could abandon the basket, walk out past the flowers, go home to her flat above the old post office, and make toast for lunch. No one would know. No one except Tania, who had spent nine months trying to become the sort of woman who did not run from supermarket aisles.

So she inhaled. Slowly. Carefully.

Then she walked to the citrus display and bought lemons anyway.

Not because she needed five of them. She only needed one for the lemon-and-basil pasta recipe she had saved and never made. But her hand closed around the fruit with a defiant tenderness. Lemons were bright. Useful. Unapologetic. They carried sunshine in their skins and bitterness in their flesh, which seemed honest.

Tania placed them in her basket.

Across the produce section, Daniel looked up.

Recognition travelled across his face before politeness did. There it was: the small shock, the tightening around the mouth, the flicker of guilt he probably thought she couldn’t read anymore. He had been the person who once knew her tea order, her childhood fear of revolving doors, and the exact way she liked her Sunday mornings. Now he looked at her as if she were someone he had met at a conference.

“Tania,” he said.

“Daniel.”

His companion glanced between them. Daniel cleared his throat. “This is Sophie.”

Of course, she was called Sophie. She had the graceful posture of someone who did reformer Pilates and answered messages promptly.

“Hi,” Sophie said warmly, because she was not the villain of Tania’s story. That made it harder.

“Hello,” Tania replied.

Daniel looked at her basket. “Big plans for lemons?”

It was such a Daniel thing to say: light, almost teasing, as if nothing important had ever happened between them. As if he had not ended their four-year relationship on a rainy Thursday by saying he needed “space to understand himself,” then used that space to understand someone else.

For a moment, Tania wanted to say something cutting. Something elegant and devastating. But she could feel her heart beating in her throat, and all the clever lines she had rehearsed in imaginary encounters vanished.

“I’m making pasta,” she said.

“That sounds nice.”

“It will be.”

The words surprised her. They sounded steady.

Daniel nodded. “You look well.”

She did not, particularly. She had not washed her hair properly; she had only twisted it into a clip. She was wearing a jumper with a tiny coffee stain near the cuff. But there was something well about her that had nothing to do with appearance. She was standing. She was not crying. She had lemons.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am.”

The lie was not complete. That mattered.

She moved past them before the conversation could become a museum exhibit of old pain. By the time she reached the dairy aisle, her fingers were trembling.

Near the yoghurts, she accidentally knocked a small tub of ricotta from the shelf. It rolled, bumped against a man’s boot, and stopped.

“Escapee,” he said, picking it up.

Tania looked up.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, with kind brown eyes and a canvas jacket dusted with flour at one sleeve. His dark hair curled slightly at the ends, as if it had given up obeying him halfway through the morning. There was a loaf of sourdough tucked under one arm and a basket full of herbs in his hand.

“Thank you,” Tania said.

“You’re welcome.” His gaze dipped briefly to her basket. “Either you’re fighting scurvy or making something excellent.”

Despite herself, she smiled. “Pasta.”

“Lemon pasta?”

“Yes.”

“Good choice. Needs black pepper. More than you think.”

The advice was offered with such gentle seriousness that Tania almost laughed. “Are you a chef?”

“Baker,” he said. “Lee Marriner. I own the little bakery on Finch Lane.”