I waited to see if the bitter night air would knock the crazy notion from my head as I left the hospital that evening. But it was still with me as I entered the dank stairwell of the multistorey car park and climbed the numerous flights to reach my car. It remained in my head for the entire journey back to the cottage and refused to budge when I attempted to immerse myself in a box set I was currently bingeing. After thirty minutes’ viewing, I gave up. I knew the plot anyway, for it was based on a book we’d published eighteen months earlier.
‘Your neighbour is the murderer,’ I told the guileless heroine before switching off the TV.
I drew my laptop from its case and switched it on. Opening a blank Word document, I headed up a table with two columns. The first I titledProsand the secondCons. I spent the next hour filling them in. Cons contained angry little comments like: ‘You’d be feeding her fantasy’ and ‘It’s preventing her from seeing the truth’. But the other column was far kinder. It was filled with sentences that read: ‘It would make her happy’ and ‘It might help her to recover’. It didn’t take long to see that the Pro column was twice as long as its neighbour. But it was more than just maths that eventually decided me. It was my final notation in the Pro side. ‘I have to do this, because she loves him… and I love her.’
*
It was one thing to have made up my mind on this bizarre course of action, but another thing entirely to execute it. First, I had to decide if I wanted to tell anyone what I was planning to do. I tried to visualise my mother’s face when I told her:I’m going to search for the man on the beach, the one who looks like Amelia’s Sam, and persuade him to pose for some more photos – ones with me in them this time.I shook my head, already knowing how that would play out. It was far better to present it to everyone if – or when – I managed to accomplish it.
And in truth, that was going to be my biggest hurdle. I was honest enough to admit finally that part of me had been unconsciously looking for the stranger on the beach on each of my morning runs. But he’d never returned to the area since that day.Can you really blame him?the voice of my conscience screamed out in my head.You acted like a crazy person. I reached for my glass of wine and tried to silence the voice with alcohol.
Come on, think, I urged my brain as I stared down at the blinking cursor on my search bar. What do you know about him? Cast your mind back. What did he reveal? I love a challenge as much as the next person, but this one seemed insurmountable. All I knew was that his first name was Nick, that he lived not far from here, and that he owned a dog named Mabel. I typed these paltry facts into the search bar and unsurprisingly got absolutely nothing. There was something else, wasn’t there? Something else he’d mentioned on that day. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t summon it up from the depths of my subconscious.
Sleep on a problem, Mum always used to advise, so I did, but the solution wasn’t miraculously there when the seagulls screamed me awake the next morning. It wasn’t there when I cleaned my teeth, or when I swallowed a mug of strong black coffee before lacing up my trainers. But it came to me, finally, in a lightning bolt of clarity as I ran along the beach, the way I’d always suspected that it might.
I work with animals. That’s what he’d said. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was something. It was a place to start.
My feet flew across the sand in my haste to get back to the cottage. My watch recorded my time as a ‘personal best’. I only hoped the same could be said of my plan.
10
The list was surprisingly long and yet I still kept adding to it. Although admittedly the last few ideas were a bit of a stretch. How likely was itreallythat the tall, dark-haired man worked in a circus or was a dolphin trainer? But the bullet-pointed professions at the top of the page in my notepad were definitely a good place to start my search.
• Vet
• Zookeeper
• Police dog handler
I could see the man in each of those professions, particularly the police one. There had been something about him that made me think of law and order or a peacekeeper.
Ignoring the work emails that I really ought to be answering, or the alarming number of submissions I was meant to read, I prepared a fresh mug of strong coffee and settled down at Amelia’s kitchen table with my laptop.
I began by searching the websites of every veterinary practice in the area, going straight to the Meet the Team tab. I found vets of every age, shape and size, but none with piercing blue eyes and jet-black hair.
With one last surgery on my list, my expectations were low as I summoned up The Willows website. I flicked quickly through the photographs of their vets, but none matched the face of the man from Amelia’s drawings.
Much later, I’d marvel at how close I came to shutting down the surgery’s internet window, but something was tugging at my subconscious. I clicked my way back through the photographs, ending up exactly where I’d started, with a vet dressed in surgical scrubs, wearing a theatre cap pulled so low down it was practically colliding with his dark-framed glasses. It was impossible to see the colour of his hair, but there was something about the lower half of his face… I enlarged the photograph until it filled my entire laptop screen and then took my reporter’s notepad and held it over the upper half of his face, obscuring the black-framed glasses that hid his eyes from view.
My attention was drawn to his mouth with its open, friendly smile, but I’d also seen those lips twisted in wry humour. It felt almost unnecessary, but I reached for my mobile and clicked on the photograph I’d taken on the beach. I held it up beside the image on my laptop screen.
‘Snap,’ I said softly, astounded that I’d actually found him. Still shaking my head in amazement, I clicked on his bio beside the photograph. It told me far more than he’d been willing to reveal on the beach. I read it through several times, as though there’d be questions later. I discovered that Nicholas Forrester, BVetMed MRCVS, graduated from the Royal Veterinary College thirteen years ago. I learnt that his specialism was in small animal surgery – which explained the scrubs – and, more interestingly, that aside from being the senior vet, he owned the practice. It seemed like an impressive achievement for someone who was only seven years older than me – another fact I’d uncovered. The bio went on to reveal that his hobbies included walking his Old English Sheepdog on the beach (something I already knew) and that he enjoyed playing the guitar and reading in his free time.
I clicked on the photo gallery tab, hoping to find another one of Nick, but they were mostly interior shots of the surgery and one final photograph of the building’s exterior. There was no one to hear my gasp of surprise, which sounded extraordinarily loud in the quiet of Amelia’s empty kitchen. The chair legs scraped on the old quarry-tiled floor as I pushed away from the table, plucked up my car keys and ran towards the door.
I blipped the car and flung open the door, dropping to a crouch beside the footwell. The flyer was exactly where I’d stowed it days ago, in the driver’s door pocket. I shivered as I reached for it, but not because I was cold. The wind tried to snatch the paper from my fingers as I slowly unfurled it. I’m not sure how long I stayed there, hunkered down beside the car, my eyes transfixed on the piece of paper in my hand. This was weird. No. It was beyond weird; it was freaky. I had been there, been at The Willows Veterinary Surgery. In a town I didn’t know, in a private car park I should never have been in, I’d somehow managed to end up at exactly the place I’d been trying to find. I’d been right there, outside the surgery where Nick Forrester worked, and I couldn’t even begin to calculate what the odds were of that happening.
*
Patience has never really been my thing. I’d always been known as the impulsive one in our family. So having to wait a full twenty-four hours before I could visit The Willows once again was a huge frustration. I even contemplated ducking out of the afternoon visiting session at the hospital. But the thought of Amelia lifting her head hopefully, the way she always did whenever she heard anyone approach her room, persuaded me that my plan was going to have to wait. I couldn’t be yet another person Amelia was waiting for, who failed to show up.
At least the delay gave me time to work out how best to put forward my rather strange proposal. I even wrote it out, determined that every word should earn its place to create the compassion and sympathy I needed Nick to feel so he’d agree to help a total stranger – albeit one who believed he was her husband. I practised my speech out loud several times throughout the evening, in the way I always did before presenting an important pitch at work. I even fell asleep that night with the words running through my head.
I had a terrible night. My sleep had been disturbed by pretty much every anxiety dream in the book. It started with the one where you’re up on stage and have totally forgotten your lines. Then I was driving the wrong way up a motorway and couldn’t find an exit. My subconscious even had me arriving at a job interview still wearing my pyjamas.
Every minute of lost rest was visible in the mirror as I studied my reflection the following morning. Even an invigorating morning run couldn’t cancel out the poor night’s sleep. I’d spent a little longer than usual on the beach, scanning the horizon for a tall man with an extremely large and shaggy dog, because I would have preferred to put forward my proposition on neutral territory. But once again, the beach was entirely empty.
I took extra care getting ready for the day. I even unearthed my tongs from the bottom of my suitcase and spent time curling my hair, attempting to create some ‘natural’ beachy waves. Which was a bit of a joke because the real-life effect the beach had on my hair was pretty horrendous. I rummaged deep into my bag of cosmetics and found a neutral eyeshadow and my mascara wand. I applied both with care and then studied the result before giving my reflection a tiny nod of approval. A slick of soft pink gloss on my lips and I was done.