I’ve been reading romance novels since I was a young girl, and years ago, in more traditional times, the happy ending at the end of a book was wrapped up in marriage. Either the hero proposed to the heroine, or, usually in an epilogue, they stood at an alter and made their vows. Such books always left me glowing, happy to know the couple had made a commitment to stay together, to be ‘happy ever after’.

Of course, modern romance novels differ widely. The world has changed; relationships have changed. Women are more empowered. Young people like their independence. Co-habiting and long-term partnership is common, and accepted. Marriages break down more frequently. Thus marriage is less of an expectation; one is free to choose.

A romance novel set in 2012, then, may well offer a happy ending, rather than a happy-ever-after one. The couple are together at the end, but there’s no necessity for a wedding.

I like all kinds of romance novels – modern and traditional – but I have to confess that in a novel that ends without any form of commitment touched upon, I never feel quite as satisfied as when I read a book that ends with the pinnacle of all romance – a proposal, a beautiful white dress, a promise to love forever.

In writing Burning Embers, which is set in the early 1970s in Kenya, I felt it was important to end the book with a wedding. Although Coral is a modern woman for her times – independent, courageous, feisty – she is living in Kenya, in a traditional society, and she is a romantic at heart who yearns for the fairytale ending. Marriage, for her, signifies the trust she has struggled to achieve through the book. And for Rafe, who has been married once before, marriage is a healing act – and a commitment to have no other woman in his life now but Coral.

The wedding makes a joyous, emotive event with which to draw together the final threads of the book. But it’s the marriage that counts. The two lovers have set aside every difficulty encountered during the book to be as one; it’s the ultimate union, the end-point on the journey they have both been on. They have climbed the mountain, and now they stand side by side beneath the clouds, the world laid out before them, ready to be explored . . . together.