‘Surely afalsesense of comfort,’ he countered. ‘How can she differentiate between fact and fiction if you keep lying to her?’ It was almost as though he’d been right there in the cottage with me while I was writing out theConslist.
‘Look, I know this might seem like a very strange way of helping her, but you have to believe me, Iknowher, I know her better than I know anyone else on earth. And I really, really think this would help her. I wouldn’t be suggesting it if I didn’t.’
‘And do her doctors agree with you? Have they sanctioned this course of action?’
Lie. Lie. Lie, I told myself, but somehow the command didn’t reach my tongue in time.
‘No, they haven’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.’
He was at the door now, holding it open for me to go through first, but my feet had turned into dead weights on the ends of my legs.
‘I know you want to do everything you can for your sister,’ Nick said kindly. ‘And I really admire that. But given a choice, I would always recommend going with medical advice.’
I could practically hear my hopes crashing to the floor. He was a veterinarian. A man of science and not steel.Obviouslyhe was going to side with the doctors.
‘And even if I didn’t think this was a cataclysmically bad idea,’ he said, ‘it also sounds like it would be quite a heavy commitment, time-wise, and as you already saw from our reception, I’m kept pretty busy around here.’
I looked frantically around the room, searching for anything that might help me to change his mind, and that’s when I saw it, on the corner of the desk. It was a double photo frame, the kind that opens like a book. On one side, a much younger version of Nick Forrester was standing beside an incredibly pretty blonde, who was holding a tiny baby in her arms. The other half of the frame held what I assumed was a far more recent photograph. Like most people without kids, I’m fairly bad at ageing them, but I thought this one looked to be about seven or eight. Instinctively, I knew the girl was the baby from the other photograph. That she was Nick’s daughter was so obvious, I didn’t even bother asking; she looked just like him.
Of coursehe wasn’t going to agree to appear in a series of staged romantic poses with me. He was married. He had a family. What the hell had I been thinking? Sanity returned, and with it a feeling of shame that was going to take quite a while to fade away.
‘Thank you very much for seeing me. And thank you for listening. I realise you didn’t have to.’
‘You piqued my curiosity,’ he admitted.
‘Well, I’m sorry for taking up your time. Please just forget I ever came today. I won’t bother you again,’ I promised, holding out my hand for him to shake it.
To Nick’s credit, he didn’t hesitate before gripping my hand. His handshake was warm and firm, but it was clearly terminating our meeting today.
‘It was no bother,’ he assured me, as our hands fell apart. ‘And, like I said, this isn’t the kind of thing that’s easy to forget.’
We were out in the corridor now and I scuttled ahead of him, desperate to get out of there. Just before we re-entered the reception area, his hand briefly touched my elbow, stalling me.
‘I really do wish your sister a full and speedy recovery.’
A huge lump suddenly formed in my throat, preventing me from replying, and by the time I swallowed it away it was already too late.
‘Mr Barton,’ Nick said, addressing a middle-aged man waiting on the chairs. ‘Would you and Dusty like to come through now?’
11
It was a real light-bulb moment, which was ironic because it happened just seconds before the lights went out. I was curled up on Amelia’s comfy two-seater, a soft, fluffy blanket over my legs and a bowl of warm, sticky popcorn beside me. On the television, Ryan Gosling was manfully rowing Rachel McAdams back to land in the middle of a downpour.
Outside the cottage, the weather was giving the on-screen conditions a run for their money. So much so that I’d turned up the volume to drown out the howl of the wind. It probably wasn’t necessary, because I’d seenThe Notebookso often I could practically quote every line in the script. But losing myself in the familiar story felt comforting, like going home. I was in my happy place – and then suddenly my thoughts were catapulted away from the action on the screen.
We’d gone out in a small rowing boat when the heavens suddenly opened up. My hair was plastered to my head and the blue dress I was wearing was sticking to me like a second skin. But none of that mattered because I knew he was going to kiss me the moment we got back on to land. I just knew it.
But those words hadn’t been spoken by Allie, the fictional character in the famous Nicholas Sparks love story. They were how Amelia had described her and Sam’s first kiss.
On the screen, Ryan Gosling was crushing his co-star against him, but my attention was somewhere else entirely. Hadallof Amelia’s so-called memories, the ones she’d relayed in such minute detail, originated in films or from TV? I ran through a couple of them, and now that I was looking for it, I identified at least two that I recognised from well-known movies and another with more than a passing similarity to a scene in a classic bestseller. The tapestry of my sister’s love affair had been carefully stolen from the pages of fiction and a world of make-believe, and the realisation was so sad it made me want to curl up in a ball and sob for all the things I couldn’t change or make better for her.
And then it happened. A flash of lightning illuminated the room through the fabric of the curtains, followed quickly by one of the loudest thunderclaps I’d ever heard, and then, with a sudden pop, the electricity went out. I froze, like a rabbit on a motorway, waiting for the lights to come back, but the seconds ticked past and the cottage remained in darkness.
Cautiously, I unfurled my legs and got to my feet. There was something eerie about the total absence of light. Without even the ambient glow of a stand-by light on an electrical device, the room felt different. I glanced towards the windows and began shuffling towards them. But my feet got entangled in the trailing ends of the blanket and as I tugged it free the popcorn bowl fell to the floor, where it shattered noisily on the old wooden boards. I crouched down to pick up the broken pieces – which in hindsight I realised was never going to end well. I’d gathered up three shards before the fourth embedded itself into the pad of my thumb. I couldn’t see the blood, but I could certainly feel it running warmly down my hand and on to my wrist. Getting to my feet, I kicked a pathway through the fragments of bowl and headed towards the kitchen.
I didn’t think my injury was serious but I didn’t want to drip blood everywhere, and I’d left a clean tea towel folded up beside the sink that would make a handy makeshift bandage. My internal radar was clearly not functioning, because I managed to walk into the coffee table and collide with the edge of the door frame as I made my way from one room to the other. More by luck than judgement, I found the kitchen and wound the tea towel around my hand.
Standing in the middle of the pitch-black room, I felt as helpless as a mole in sunlight. I had no idea where Amelia’s fuse box was, nor – let’s be honest– what to do if Ididmanage to find it. More importantly, I didn’t have a clue where to find a torch or candles. I thought longingly of my phone, plugged into its charger beside my bed. If I could get to the spare room without walking into any more furniture, I could at least use the torch on my mobile. I was crossing the room like a zombie in a science-fiction film, arms stretched out in front of me, when a bang on the front door stopped me.