In hindsight, I should probably have slipped the locket back into Amelia’s jewellery box where it belonged, rather than leaving it in my room. But I was too afraid I’d ‘accidentally’ forget to take it with me to the hospital the following day.As if,observed a wry voice in my head.
The importance of the necklace and how it would impact on Amelia’s state of mind had begun as a small worry and then, in the way trifling fears have a habit of doing, had grown exponentially throughout the sleepless middle-of-the-night hours.
It had become so bad, it almost felt as though the oval locket was watching me from across the room, like an evil eye. It was hardly surprising that I had indigestion, I thought, giving myself a strict mental shake before returning to the guest bedroom.
Of course I went over to the locket. How could I not? I’d played out what would happen the next day when I took it to the hospital so many times, it now felt more like a memory than a prediction.
I could see me reaching into my pocket and extracting the necklace. I could see the glint of the silver under the bright hospital lights as the locket and chain dropped like a tiny anchor into my sister’s outstretched hand.
But it was what would happen next that was impossible to predict. When Amelia opened the locket and found it empty, was I really going to lie and say the photograph must have fallen out? Or was that the moment to say, as gently and as kindly as I could, that there’d never been anything in the locket in the first place? Or was option three the way to go? I shivered, wondering if I was a good enough actress to pretend I could actually see a photograph in the empty locket, if Amelia said she could too.TheEmperor’s New Clotheshad always been one of my favourite stories as a child, but living through it, pretending to see something that I knew wasn’t there, felt disturbingly dark.
*
I woke up before the sun again. It was a new and unappealing habit that I was looking forward to breaking. Disappointingly, the boiler – which I still hadn’t managed to befriend – was two hours away from heating up enough water for my morning shower. Too restless to go back to bed, I decided that exercise was what I needed. Jeff was an ardent Central Park jogger, and occasionally he’d persuade me to join him on an early-morning run. It always put me in a better and more positive frame of mind for the day, and that was something I could definitely do with right now.
I hadn’t brought any gym clothes with me, but I found a pair of leggings and a matching hoodie in Amelia’s wardrobe. Feeling virtuous, I splashed cold water on my face and tied my hair back in a loose ponytail before pulling on the borrowed sportswear.
It was colder than I expected when I let myself out of Amelia’s home. I could see my breath pluming like speech bubbles as I performed a few half-hearted stretches, which I was possibly doing all wrong, but for once Jeff wasn’t around to correct me. I paused for a moment, waiting to see if a pang of missing him was about to follow that thought. It didn’t, which was something ‘future me’ should probably think about. But right now, the only thing on my mind was the beach, my run, and the joy of catching another sunrise as the first tentative rays of daylight began to spill on to the sand.
I paused for a moment by the cottage’s low wooden gate that led directly on to the beach. Going right would eventually take me to the nearest village, with the promise of a welcoming café with hot coffee and pastries. Turning left would lead nowhere except to the mudflats. I overruled my grumbling stomach and turned left.
As expected, I was the only person on the beach at that hour. But I wasn’t looking for company, so that was fine with me. After about two minutes I slowed down to a gentle jog, because running on sand was way harder than doing it on paved pathways. But more importantly, I still hadn’t given up the hope of finding Amelia’s phone on the beach. Logically, I knew my chances of doing so were probably less than scooping up a lottery win, but I still felt compelled to try. If only she’d installed Find My Phone, or if the device hadn’t been switched off, there might have been a glimmer of hope to my search. And bearing in mind that the phone would now have spent several days buried in either sand or mud, it would be nothing short of a miracle if I found it.
But it was a morning for miracles.
It was forty minutes since I’d left the cottage, long enough for the sun to have kicked the moon to the kerb and taken its place in the sky. I stopped to catch my breath and looked around, absently wondering how far I’d run, when I saw I was no longer the only person on the beach. Down near the water’s edge, where the tide was gradually receding, a tall figure was jogging on the wet sand.
I couldn’t make out much about them, except that they were moving with an easy rhythm that I definitely hadn’t mastered. They probably weren’t pink-faced and sweaty either, I thought, as I pushed back yet another damp strand of hair that had escaped from the ponytail. I turned away, about to retrace my footsteps in the sand, when a sound brought me to a standstill. It halted the other runner too, for the figure slowed to a stop and then turned to face the sea, as though waiting for something.
The sound came again, easier to identify this time. With a chorus of loud, joyful barks, a shape emerged from the breaking surf. The barking identified the animal as a dog, even though it was practically the size of a small donkey. Transfixed, I watched as the animal stopped at the water’s edge and shook itself. Even from this distance I could see the water spraying in every direction, like a fountain. The sound of a man’s laughter carried clearly on the wind.
This was the point when I should have turned away, but something was beginning to stir inside me. The man. This beach. The enormous dog.
The man produced a ball and threw it in an impressive overarm bowl along the wet sand, and his dog bounded after it like a rocket. The animal’s coat was still wet from its dip in the sea, but not so much that I couldn’t make out exactly what kind of dog it was. An Old English Sheepdog.
The dog was hurtling after the ball, the man was jogging after his pet, and suddenly – without any conscious thought or decision – I was running after both of them.
‘Hey! Wait!’ I gasped out as I ran, but my lungs were too busy coping with the unaccustomed spurt of speed to provide me with sufficient breath to shout. The wheezy words were frustratingly whipped away on the breeze. The man and the dog were still running, faster than I’d ever be able to match, and the distance between us was lengthening.
Every muscle in my legs was on fire and the stitch in my side felt like a genuine stab wound, but I ran on. I was now at the water’s edge, my trainers sending up tiny plumes of spray as I splashed through the foam of the outgoing waves. It was easier to run on the compacted wet sand, but I still would never have caught up with the man if he hadn’t picked up the bright-yellow tennis ball and lobbed it into the water. His dog delightedly chased after it and finally I was close enough for him to hear my cry.
‘Wait. Please, can you wait?’
The man was still about fifty metres away, but my plea brought him to a stop. He turned around and I felt my knees instantly buckle. He immediately began running towards me.
The world was spinning crazily, and it had nothing to do with the way I’d pushed myself beyond my physical limits. Somehow, I managed to scramble back on to my feet. Amelia’s fancy sportswear was wet and caked in sand, but that was the furthest thing from my thoughts right then.
‘Hey, are you okay?’ the man asked with concern.
I stared up at him, the power of speech suddenly lost.
‘Are you hurt?’ he continued.
I shook my head so violently I felt the slap of my ponytail strike first one cheek and then the other.
‘Okay,’ said the man, a little uncertainly, taking an almost imperceptible half step backwards. ‘Were you calling out to me just now?’
I nodded. It was incredible. Amelia had captured every last detail of this man’s face. The sketch, which I’d probably looked at a hundred times since the previous afternoon, had literally come to life and was standing right there before me.