I shaved almost eight minutes off my usual journey time but the vague feeling of unease still lingered as I reached the door of the agency.
My fingers stilled for a moment at the keypad to silence the alarm system, suddenly afraid the lightning might have stolen the code from me. I closed my eyes and muscle memory took over, keying in the correct sequence. I sighed in relief. Perhaps all my missing memories were still there, just waiting for the right prompts to nudge them back into place.
Once inside I surveyed the tiny high street office that I’d rented for the past three years. The familiar feeling of pride and achievement, which hadn’t really dimmed since the very first morning when I’d opened for business with a thousand dreams and a grin that refused to leave my face, was a little harder to locate today.
Starting my own agency had been a huge gamble, but I’d been bolstered by confidence, a decent bank loan, and the support ofmy two best friends. It might be my name above the door, but Mel and Jackson had been right there beside me. They’d given up weekends and evenings to help me decorate the office, not because they loved DIY, but because they believed in me. The furniture I’d sourced from flea markets and obscure auctions, with a long-suffering Jackson at my side, still looked great, as did the hand-stitched scatter cushions on the client sofa which Mel had presented me with just before we opened.
The sudden sting of missing them took me by surprise. When had I stopped replying to their messages? Or started making excuses when they suggested we get together? Why had I prioritised the success of my business over the very people who’d helped me get started? Why was I so terrified of failure that I’d allowed the agency to steal so many evenings and weekends that I should have been spending with people I actually cared about? I wound my arms around my waist, needing a hug in a way I hadn’t done in a very long time. I might have a thousand ‘friends’ on social media, but none of them meant as much as the two real-life ones I’d carelessly kicked to the kerb.
Stop this. Stop this right now. You have work to do. There was no doubt at all which Ellie that was. But she was right. I wasn’t the moping kind. Yesterday I’d survived a one-in-a-million, life-threatening event. And if I was strong enough to do that... well, I was strong enough to deal with a few moments of self-pity without falling apart. Or worse, reaching out to the only person who might understand what I’d been through.
I went through the motions: opening emails, listening to messages, and reading contracts, but subconsciously I was waiting for Old Ellie to put in an appearance, because the new one was acting like a clueless work-experience student on the first day of her placement.
For inspiration, I scrolled back through old Instagram posts for the agency, wondering who that put-together, composed redhead was in the reels. She was smart, personable, and incredibly business-savvy. She understood how Instagram and TikTok were used by so many of her clients and had tailored the content perfectly. She was the reason why the agency was gaining traction in an already overcrowded market. She was clearly great at her job and knew exactly what she was doing. She might look an awful lot like me, but I wasn’t sure that pretending to be her would fool anyone. Because today I felt different, on a deep, molecular level that made absolutely no sense.
After a fruitless few hours flitting from task to task and basically achieving nothing, I was ready for a break. The coffee shop felt familiar and welcoming, in a way that my own office hadn’t. Maybe I should quit property and retrain as a barista, I thought, with possibly the first smile I’d managed to crack all day.
Happily, my patchy memory still remembered my favourite coffee order, and it was only when the man behind the counter picked up a sharpie to write my name on the paper cup that everything went off-kilter again.
‘Name?’ He sounded tetchy, as though he’d had to ask me more than once.
It wasn’t a hard question but forcing myself to say ‘Ellie’ rather than ‘Rhys’ – which would have raised numerous eyebrows, including mine – was surprisingly hard. I thought after this many hours his name would be out of my head, but apparently not.
I left the shop in a strange, almost trance-like state, nearly tripping over a homeless man and his dog, who I must have passed so many times he’d become almost invisible to me. But I saw him now, and for the first time I felt something that I probably should have felt a very long time ago.
I returned to the coffee shop, emerging again a few minutes later with a second coffee and a bag containing two of the biggest paninis they sold.
‘I got one for your dog. I hope he likes cheese,’ I said, feeling clumsy and awkward as I placed the goods on the pavement beside him.
‘You’re an angel,’ said the life-beaten man, with eyes full of gratitude.
‘I think I nearly was,’ I said, smiling at his confusion and feeling better than I had all morning.
It felt like a reward for the small good deed when my phone rang before I’d drained even half of my caramel latte.
Rhys Davies was displayed on my phone screen, and my heart immediately forgot how many beats it was meant to do in a minute and squeezed in a dozen or so more.
Leaving my desk, I crossed the room to take the call on the client sofa. It was positioned beneath a small stained-glass window, bathing whoever sat there in jewelled hues. Surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colours, I answered.
‘Hi, Ellie. It’s Rhys. Is this a convenient time to talk?’
‘It is,’ I said, smiling at the sound of his voice. ‘Just don’t tell the boss, because I’ve done practically no work today.’
I heard his soft chuckle and suddenly felt like I was fifteen years old all over again and the boy who everyone fancied had just shot a smile my way.
‘Is she a tyrant?’ He was joking and had no way of knowing that he wasn’t that far off the mark. I was the hardest taskmaster I’d ever worked for.
‘She can be,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’
He drew in a breath and suddenly I knew this wasn’t just a social call.
‘Annoying news, I’m afraid. I just had lunch with Olly, and he told me one of the journalists from yesterday was poking around at the hospital this morning. He even faked an injury to get into A and E and somehow managed to get some information out of the staff about us.’
My stomach gave a tiny lurch. ‘What did he find out?’
‘Not our names, thankfully, no one was that indiscreet. But I think he now knows what we look like. One of us, apparently, is a heavily tattooed guy in his thirties, and the other a beautiful redhead who owns a local business.’
My head wanted to worry that my identity wouldn’t be difficult to uncover from that, but my heart had got itself stuck on the ‘beautiful’ bit. I really wanted that to be Rhys’s spin rather than anyone else’s.