Книга - The Family Secret

The Family Secret
Tracy Buchanan








The Family Secret

TRACY BUCHANAN








Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Tracy Buchanan 2019

Cover design © Lisa Horton 2019

Cover photographs © Trevellion / Shutterstock (https://www.shutterstock.com) 2019

Tracy Buchanan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008264680

Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008264673

Version: 2018-12-12




Praise for Tracy Buchanan’s novels (#u72e3310f-441c-5ff0-a636-af6abba9c192)


‘Tracy Buchanan writes moving, gripping, heartbreakingly real family drama.’

Susan Lewis, Sunday Times bestselling author of Believe in Me

‘An ambitious and deeply poignant story that will take you into another world.’ Heat

‘I was left absolutely traumatised in a totally brilliant way … Beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting … Really worth a read.’

Hello!

‘Something very different, refreshing and intriguing … I loved it!’

Tracy Rees, Richard and Judy bestselling author of The Hourglass

‘An intriguing mystery written with warmth and emotion.’

Lucy Clarke, bestselling author of You Let Me In

‘An intriguing story with plenty of twists and turns. A plot that keeps you guessing!’

Gill Paul, bestselling author of The Secret Wife

‘Twisty, emotional and far too hard to put down. I loved this heartbreaker from the fabulous Tracy Buchanan!’

Katie Marsh, bestselling author of My Everything




What readers loved about Tracy Buchanan’s last novel,The Lost Sister … (#u72e3310f-441c-5ff0-a636-af6abba9c192)


‘A beautifully written book that truly sucks you in. Intriguing, likable and hugely relatable characters, plus scenery so gorgeous you can’t help but wish you were living alongside them. A perfect read for those who like mysteries with plenty of twists and turns.’

‘This book will stay with me a long time … Beautifully written with so much care and love.’

‘Tracy Buchanan knows how to weave a great story … and this is one of her best.’

‘This is an absolutely amazing novel about mothers and daughters, and the choices that we all face in our lives. Tracy Buchanan delivers a powerful story that kept me turning page after page.’

‘I normally tend to go for psychological thrillers and detective series so reading The Lost Sister was taking a step out of my comfort zone. I’m so glad I did. This is my first read from Tracy Buchanan but I can say it certainly won’t be the last.’

‘I really enjoyed this book, connected with the characters and the story, and eagerly wanted to know how it was going to conclude.’


Dedicated to my wonderful aunts: Jenny, Judy, Laura, Val and Wendy.


Table of Contents

Cover (#u0a5a6b78-076d-5db6-ac6d-617c69e98395)

Title Page (#ud8c1306a-a559-5d42-9353-9fbee3b3db0a)

Copyright (#uc018b4b5-9349-5bd3-9c3f-dfec892e0e89)

Praise for Tracy Buchanan’s Novels (#uf41ad3d1-3931-59bd-b3d8-2707bc3e916e)

What Readers Loved About Tracy Buchanan’s Last Novel, The Lost Sister … (#ua898fbe0-767e-5ce7-88e3-2389bcae5982)

Dedication (#ue32d4e14-7e63-5bd5-91fc-7f479965bade)



Prologue (#u1899ae63-6b9a-5fc8-bd8c-94f0e4966dcc)



Chapter One (#ufebfae26-02a2-5b7b-ba3a-b0830953b267)



Chapter Two (#u7700f822-3b61-5deb-b4e6-3b4d83c78fa5)



Chapter Three (#u3c38fe3a-3877-57f3-a18a-d99e57cb0859)



Chapter Four (#u2f2bea54-0942-5aa3-bd68-2cac6f60b870)



Chapter Five (#u39eb9a37-42e7-5b45-a00d-dbae95012bbe)



Chapter Six (#udea3ae58-ad70-50f0-8c8f-03ed23123e9d)



Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)



Letter to My Readers (#litres_trial_promo)



Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



Keep Reading… (#litres_trial_promo)



Also by Tracy Buchanan (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue (#ulink_aa5837f2-6bec-57f5-bed7-af0201782927)


She scrabbles at the broken ice around her to try to pull herself from the frigid water. But her fingers are like frozen wood, the ice brittle as it snaps at her touch.

She looks around frantically. She knows how this can end, has heard it a million times from people: ‘Don’t risk walking across the lake, it’s not worth it.’ But how else was she to get away?

She kicks her legs in the water, but already they have grown so weak. Just a few seconds in the icy depths and her body is beginning to shut down. She manages to twist around anyway, searching for help on the lake’s banks. And oh God, there’s somebody there!

‘Help,’ she screams. ‘I can’t get out.’

He steps forward and relief floods through her. But then he stills.

‘I’m serious!’ she shouts, icy water flooding into her mouth.

But he just continues staring at her. What is he doing? She peers behind him towards the lodge which is sprawled out on the lakefront. Golden lights glimmer, a huge Christmas tree adorns a vast window. Surely someone else can see her?

As she thinks that, two faces appear in one of the windows.

She frantically waves. ‘Help,’ she screams, voice warped with the cold. ‘Somebody help!’

But they too just stand there, motionless.

Can they see her? Yes, she’s stood at that very window many times before. It has the best view of the lake.

Why aren’t they running out to help her? Why isn’t he helping her?

Maybe they don’t want to. That shouldn’t surprise her after all she’s learnt today.

No, he wouldn’t allow me to die. He wouldn’t, no matter what has passed between us.

There is another possibility, of course. She could be imagining the figures at the window. Hallucinating. Does that mean she’s dying? As she thinks that, her vision blurs.

Snow-blind already?

Either scenario is terrifying. She tries to plead with him again. ‘I’m sorry, I – I won’t say anything,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘Please …’ She puts a shaking hand out to him. He frowns slightly, hesitation in his eyes. But then he crosses his arms.

Terror surges through her, making her strong. She forces herself to push up from the water again, despite the growing heaviness of her trembling limbs and the strange pain starting to seep through the core of her body. She twists around, long hair shimmering in the frigid water around her, shaking fingers feeling across the ice to find a stronger wedge to pull herself up on.

But there is none, the ice is too thin. So she tries to smash her hands into the ice instead. If she can plough her way through, maybe she can reach the bank again and scramble back up.

The pain is excruciating though and her hands feel like boulders.

And then the ice breaks.

Hope surges. Maybe the rest of the ice will break. She can swim through it! She tries to propel herself forward. But her legs can’t move, the remaining ice firm.

She pinches her eyes closed. Don’t fail me now, she pleads with her body. Please please.

But all she can see is ice heaped upon ice, and all she can feel is the frozen water pulling her beneath the surface.

She should have known it would end like this, here in the very place where it all began. As she’d looked across the frozen lake all those years before towards the lodge, Christmas lights twinkling in its windows, she’d known, somehow, she’d be tied to the place for ever. She just hadn’t realised it would be her death tying her to it.

And she hadn’t realised he would just watch as it happened.

She closes her eyes and imagines a scrabbling of boots, a deep breath, his hands grasping her and pulling her out. She imagines looking up under iced eyelashes to see his soot-black hair, his eyes taut with concern. And then safety on the lake’s banks and in his arms.

But he’s still just watching.

Snow falls around her and she remembers another time when it snowed like this. She hears the laughter of children; red cheeks and icy smiles. Her memories are running to her, calling her name, pulling her into a bottomless past. She opens her arms to them as her head sinks beneath the frozen lake …




Chapter One (#ulink_f74b4f20-763f-5e98-86c8-520f12d99bda)

Amber

Winterton Chine

12 December 2009


Winter in The Chine, as the locals call it, can be brutal. Freezing winds sweep in from the east across the English Channel, buffeting down a valley that’s carved into the land, the trees above frigid with ice. Despite this, the beach rarely ices over, except during two of the harshest winters on record: the 1962 winter and the one Amber Caulfield wakes up to on the morning the girl first walks into her life.

She considers staying curled up beneath her duvet that morning instead of doing what she does six days out of seven: walking to the beach and opening up her gift shop.

‘Nope,’ she says to herself in a harsh voice as she grabs a towel and makes her way to the shower. ‘I need those sales and those walls still need painting.’ Winter isn’t just harsh in Winterton Chine because of that east wind. The absence of summer means no tourists, Amber’s main customer base. But she’s hoping a fresh lick of paint and some other renovations will get the shop all ready for the brief Christmas rush during the annual festive market in The Chine. A market that’s due to start in just over a week.

She showers, pulls on a pair of thick leggings and long black jumper and sweeps her red hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. When she steps outside, still buttoning her long black coat, the cold hits her like a sledgehammer. She rubs at the stubs on her left hand, sore with the memory of another winter as cold as this, and walks towards the beach. It’s just a five-minute stroll from her flat down the winding road that dominates the centre of The Chine. As she walks, she waves at the familiar faces she passes: some of the mums walking their kids to school, Jim from the local newsagents, a bus driver who lifts his hand in greeting as he drives people past, on their way to the main station for another day of work.

The beach opens up at the bottom of the road, a narrow stretch of sand. Above it sits a forest, the same forest that lines the main road. A long, straight promenade lines the beach, popular with dog walkers. On the promenade are thirty pastel-coloured beach huts, three of which have been taken over by Amber’s gift shop. She takes in the way the roofs of the little huts are fringed with small icicles and shakes her head. Not a chance anyone will be venturing onto the beach today. That’ll change in one week, she’s determined it will, especially when people see the new colours she’s painted it. She strides towards it with a forced enthusiasm.

The shop is right in the middle of the row, one pink hut, one baby blue, one evergreen. Well, it used to be evergreen. Now half of it is bright red. She’s going for a bolder colour scheme in an attempt to draw in more people. The other huts will follow suit over the coming days, the pink one turning bright yellow, the baby blue a bright emerald. A white wooden picket fence forms a square around them, making it clear they’re all together. She still can’t decide whether to repaint that too. Above the middle hut hangs a sign: Caulfield Gifts. Est 1955.

Amber’s grandfather had opened it before passing it down to his daughters, Amber’s mother and aunt, when he died. But the two women had retired from the business eight years ago, meaning Amber was now in charge. It sated her hunger for some creative output. For December, she created a Christmas feel with stag emblems and snowy scenes, fir-tree bunting and icicle lights, the walls lined with shelves to display local artists’ creations. On dry days, Amber placed more product on the veranda outside on top of four crates she’d painted the same colours as the huts. It caught the attention of people on the beach and in the café nearby, drawing lots of tourists eager to take home keepsakes during the summer months.

But it was so quiet in the winter. So much so that her mother suggested she only open in the summer months, and find a winter job elsewhere. Amber liked the peace of the beach though, the feel of the biting wind against her face. It reminded her she was here, surviving, despite what had happened to her as a child.

She rubs her bad hand again before unlocking the padlock on the three shutters and yanking them up with her good hand. She leans down and switches on the fairy lights that hang across the ceilings of each hut, then sets up a chalkboard outside, declaring ‘Wonderful Winter Discounts!’

She pulls her stool out and sits on it, closing her eyes and enjoying a moment of peace before getting on with the painting.

‘Caught you sleeping on the job!’ a familiar voice rings out. She turns to see her mother Rita and her aunt Viv walking down the beach, bundled up in their winter coats, red hair like hers lifting in the wind. Their arms are linked and they’re both wearing long, fur-lined boots, woollen coats that reach down to their calves, and colourful scarves that seem to go on for ever, wound around their necks. They claim to be six years apart in age, but Amber sometimes wonders if they are secretly twins.

‘Not really catching me in the act if I wasn’t trying to hide it in the first place,’ Amber says, keeping her eyes closed just to prove her point.

‘Here, this’ll wake you up,’ her mother says, handing her a plastic mug of steaming coffee. ‘Shot of gingerbread too, before you ask.’

Amber smiles as she takes the drink. ‘Thanks. Do I have the pleasure of both your company today then?’ she asks as she takes a sip, enjoying the sweet hint of gingerbread she so loves in her coffee at this time of the year.

‘Listen to that sarcasm, Rita,’ her aunt Viv says, shaking her head at her sister. ‘You really ought to take more control of your child.’ There’s a wicked glint in her blue eyes that shows she’s just joking.

‘Child,’ Amber says, shaking her own head. ‘I’m five years away from forty.’

Rita flinches. ‘Don’t remind me. You better not have a party, Len down the road still thinks I’m fifty.’

Viv laughs. ‘Fifty? With those wrinkles!’

‘Wrinkles are the new dimples, don’t you know?’ Rita drawls. They all laugh.

‘Seriously though,’ Amber says, ‘are you going to hang around like you did last week and scare the customers off?’

The two older women look at each other in horror. ‘Us? Scare the customers off? We ran this place for over thirty years!’

Amber can’t help but smile. Truth is, she loves having her aunt and mother there. It makes the day go faster when custom is slow. And while some customers find the two eccentric redheads laughing and joking outside the shop a tad scary, most find them endearing. In fact, they often make a few sales themselves, even if they do sometimes halve the price without checking with Amber first.

‘Anyway,’ Viv says, looking around her, ‘what customers are there to scare off?’

Amber rolls her eyes as she heads to the back of the hut to grab the red paint.

‘You need to get yourself on eBay,’ Viv continues.

‘Or Etsy! That’s the new sparkly thing, isn’t it?’ Rita chimes in.

‘I’ve told you about ten million times, I am not going online,’ Amber says, carefully lifting the tin of paint with her good hand. ‘People need to touch these items, smell them. It’s all part of the experience.’

Viv picks up a small mirror made of shells and sniffs it. ‘Smells like rotting crabs to me.’

‘Not to mention the smell of paint,’ Rita adds, wrinkling her nose. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just stick with the pastels.’

Amber puts her hand on her hip and looks her aunt up and down. ‘Gee, thanks for your support.’

Viv laughs and pulls her niece into a hug. ‘Come on, you know we’re joking around.’

‘When are you ever not joking around?’ Amber replies, shaking her head in disapproval. She doesn’t mind it really. It’s part of the three women’s camaraderie, the push and pull, the jokes and sarcasm. They drive her crazy sometimes, the two of them. But Amber isn’t sure where she’d be right now if it hadn’t been for their constant presence. They are all the family she’s known, being born and brought up in Winterton Chine. Her dad, a lorry driver, had cleared off a few months after she was born.

‘He always moaned about having to put up with two crazy redheads,’ her mother would say. ‘Then you come along, another redhead, screaming your lungs off every hour of the night.’ Some might take that as rejection. But from what Amber had heard from her mother, aunt and half the people in town about her hard-drinking, verbally abusive dad, she took it as a compliment. For years, it had just been her and her mother in their little terraced house in town, her aunt Viv a few doors down with her husband. But then they’d divorced and now it was just the three women – or ‘The Three Reds’ as the locals called them.

‘Getting really cold,’ Rita says, unfolding a thick fleece blanket and placing it over hers and Viv’s legs as they sit on a bench. ‘They’re saying on the news we might get snow.’

Amber twists at the wool of her jumper. ‘Hope not.’ She looks down at her left hand and the centimetre-long stubs that are an excuse for her fingers. Cold days like this always make her loss even more pronounced. She grabs a glove and pulls it on as her aunt and mother exchange a look. She worries that the sight of her fingerless hand puts customers off. Though her mum and aunt tell her she’s imagining it, she sees the way some customers’ eyes sweep over her right hand, a fleeting look of confusion. Better just to wear gloves when she can.

She sighs and grabs her paintbrush as her aunt and mother sit in contented silence.

‘Oh! Here we go, first customer of the day,’ her aunt says, voice puncturing the silence.

Amber follows her aunt’s gaze to see a woman walking down the beach. No, not a woman. More a slip of a girl with shoulder-length hair the colour of white birch, streaks of blue through it. Amber shades her eyes from the hard winter sun, taking in the girl’s woollen dress and snagged tights. ‘She’s not wearing a coat.’

‘No shoes either,’ Viv adds in surprise. ‘My God, she’ll catch her death.’

The girl stumbles slightly then pauses, looking down at herself in confusion.

‘Looks like she’s drunk,’ Rita says.

‘No, something’s not right with her.’ Amber grabs the blanket off her mother and aunt’s knees, steps off the veranda and rushes towards the girl.




Chapter Two (#ulink_796efc0e-5402-57bd-b712-c8e7fe5a108a)


Amber crouches down beside the girl and wraps the blanket around her slim shoulders. The girl is freezing to the touch and is shaking uncontrollably, her long colourless eyelashes glistening with frost. Amber instinctively pulls her close, willing her own warmth to seep into the girl’s fragile body.

‘What on earth are you doing here with no coat?’ she asks as Viv and Rita jog over.

The girl doesn’t say anything, just looks up at Amber with big, bewildered eyes.

‘Look at her, she’s freezing,’ Viv comments as they get to her.

Amber’s mum looks down at the girl, brow furrowed. ‘Are you local, love?’

The girl blinks, her eyelashes sticking together from the ice. ‘I – I don’t know,’ she replies. The three redheads exchange looks.

‘She looks familiar,’ Viv murmurs. ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘How long have you been out here?’ Rita asks.

‘Where are your shoes?’ Viv adds.

‘Too many questions!’ Amber says. She helps the girl up. ‘Come on, let’s get you into the warmth, you need defrosting.’

They all help the girl limp towards the beach hut and Amber takes the chance to examine her pretty face. Her eyes are set wide apart beneath her feathery blonde fringe, her nose a button. There’s a ring in her nose, a gem in her eyebrow. Both pretty and blue, like the streaks in her hair. She looks to be in her late teens. There’s a chance Amber’s aunt is right – maybe the girl had got drunk the night before and ended up in one of the beach huts? It happened sometimes. But looking at this girl, Amber thought she didn’t seem the type to do that. Not like Amber was at that age, wild-haired and even more wild-minded.

They walk into the middle hut and Amber helps the girl sit down on a stool. She turns up the electric heater. As she does so, Rita gasps. Amber follows her gaze to see the hair behind the girl’s right ear is matted with blood.

‘Call an ambulance,’ Amber says quickly, pulling her glove off, grabbing a sanitary towel from her bag and pressing it against the girl’s wound. The girl flinches then tries to brush the towel away.

‘No, love,’ Amber says, gently lowering her hand. ‘You’ve hurt yourself.’

Amber’s mother looks at the blood-soaked towel then turns away, hand to her mouth, as Viv pulls her mobile phone out and calls for an ambulance. When she explains the girl’s injury to the person on the other end, the girl’s eyes widen with fear. Amber puts her hand on her arm to comfort her and the girl looks down at Amber’s hand, taking in the missing fingers and the gnarled stumps at the end. She traces a cold finger over the stumps and Amber quickly pulls her hand away.

‘Let’s get something warm in you while we wait for the experts, hey?’ Rita says, pulling herself together. ‘Tea? Hot chocolate?’

‘Coffee?’ Viv adds as she puts the phone down.

‘I don’t think it’s like that, Viv,’ Amber says. ‘Anyway, best we don’t give her anything to eat or drink before she’s checked out properly.’

‘Really? Remember when you fell over and hit your head after that party, drunk as a skunk?’

Amber ignores her aunt, clearing some Christmas bunting from a small table and sitting down on it. ‘What’s your name then, love?’

The girl is silent for a few moments. Then she shakes her head, tears filling her eyes. ‘I don’t know it. Why don’t I know my own name?’

‘It’s okay,’ Amber says in a soothing voice. ‘It’ll be the shock of falling over. I remember being a bit confused when I did one time.’

Her aunt and mum suppress smiles.

‘My mum and aunt were too busy laughing to notice I’d actually hurt myself,’ Amber adds, scowling at them both. ‘Do you remember anything, like how you got here?’

The girl looks out towards the sea, flinching slightly. Then she quickly shakes her head.

‘Steady!’ Amber says as the towel shifts from the movement, the girl’s blood seeping onto her fingers.

‘Sorry,’ the girl says, stilling herself. ‘I – I don’t remember anything, really.’ Panic flutters in her eyes. ‘Why can’t I remember anything, why can’t I—’

‘Don’t worry, love,’ Amber’s mum says, putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘It’ll come back to you eventually.’

The sound of sirens pierce the air.

‘They said they’d be quick,’ Viv says. She marches outside and waves up at the ambulance driving down the main road. A couple walking their dog stop and stare. It wasn’t often people heard sirens around those parts. Bar some recent muggings, the town was usually devoid of much crime.

A few moments later, two paramedics appeared at the entrance of the hut, a man and a woman.

‘Looks like you’re getting yourself nice and warm,’ the woman says as she gently lifts the sanitary towel from the girl’s wound and examines it. ‘Yep, that’ll need stitches.’ The paramedic looks at Amber. ‘It’ll explain the confusion too. Quite common with head injuries. You don’t know her then?’

Amber shakes her head along with her mother and aunt.

‘The poor thing doesn’t remember anything,’ Rita adds.

The male paramedic pulls a large silver sheet from his bag and wraps it around the girl’s shoulders. ‘What brought you walking along the beach with no shoes and coat on then?’ he asks as he does so.

‘I don’t know,’ the girl whispers. ‘I really don’t.’

The female paramedic pulls some latex gloves on then blows on her hands. ‘I’m just going to briefly touch your belly, all right? Just to check your temperature. Probably best we get your wet dress off anyway.’

The girl looks alarmed.

‘Here, hold that blanket up,’ Amber says to her mother and aunt, gesturing to a blanket that is for sale. They do as she asks, holding the blanket up to create a screen. Amber quickly helps the girl pull her dress off then wraps the first blanket tight around her and places the other layers on top.

‘Thank you,’ the girl says to her, peering up at her in the darkness created by the screen.

Amber feels her heart clench. ‘No worries.’

The paramedic places her fingers against the girl’s tummy then her neck, checking her watch as she does so. ‘I think you might have a mild touch of hypothermia too. Combined with the head injury, best we get you to hospital sharpish.’

The girl looks alarmed again.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Amber says, grasping her hand.

‘Will you come with me?’ the girl asks in a small voice.

‘Of course,’ Amber says as the paramedics help the girl up.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after the hut,’ her mother calls after Amber as they walk out.

‘God help me,’ Amber mumbles under her breath. ‘I don’t want to come back to find all my stock listed on eBay and the red paint stripped off,’ she calls over her shoulder.

The girl smiles to herself as the paramedics laugh.

As Amber walks out of the hut with the girl, she feels the girl’s small cold hand creep into hers. Amber is surprised to feel tears flood her eyes.

Man up, Red.

The hospital isn’t how Amber remembers it. She’d done well to avoid it the past few years, even dealing with a fractured toe at home. She looks around, hoping she won’t see one of the reasons she’s been avoiding it.

‘We’ll get you right as rain,’ the paramedic says as she wheels the girl into a cubicle on a stretcher. A doctor walks over and Amber is relieved to see it’s a female doctor, not the person she’s trying to avoid.

‘Don’t worry, Mum, we’ll look after your daughter,’ the smiling doctor says to Amber as she pulls some gloves on.

Amber feels her face flush. ‘She’s not mine. I just found her on the beach.’

The doctor nods. ‘Ah, sorry, my mistake.’

Amber looks down at the girl and for a moment, she imagines she was her daughter, still here, still alive. She even imagines the phone call.

‘Your Katy’s been found wandering around the beach, Amber,’ one of the regular dog walkers would say in an early morning phone call. ‘Sorry, love, we think she might have had a few too many drinks.’

She’d be angry at her daughter but understanding too. Hadn’t she done the same as a kid, wandering drunk along the shoreline in the early hours? She’d ground her, maybe for a week or so. Get her home and tuck her up in bed, give her space for a bit. Then they’d have ‘the talk’. Amber would exaggerate her own drunken stories, tell her about her old friend Louise who got so drunk, she nearly drowned during a late-night skinny dip, another who got pregnant at fourteen. Her daughter would roll her eyes. ‘God, Mum, it was just once.’ And they’d laugh then order some pizza, maybe watch a film.

‘Are you okay?’ Amber hears a small voice ask. ‘You’re crying.’

She looks down at the girl. The girl who isn’t her daughter. Amber quickly wipes her tears away. ‘I’m fine,’ she says, slightly sharper than she’d intended. She starts backing away. ‘You take care, okay? You’re in good hands now.’

‘You’re not going to stay?’ the girls asks, struggling to sit up. ‘Please stay.’

Amber shakes her head, clenching her good hand into a fist to make herself strong. ‘I can’t. I have the shop, remember? Plus I need to get it painted before the Christmas market rush,’ she adds, looking at the doctor and shrugging. ‘Anyway, you don’t need me, look at all these people here for you!’ Her voice breaks as she says that. Then she strides from the cubicle, trying not to think of the lost look on the girl’s face.

As she is leaving the ward, a familiar voice rings out. ‘Amber?’

‘Great,’ Amber mumbles under her breath. She takes a deep breath then turns around to see the man she’d been hoping to avoid: her ex-husband, Jasper. He looks as dishevelled as ever, the white doctor’s coat and dark trousers that cover his tall slim build creased. His blond hair sticks out in all directions and there are circles under his blue eyes.

‘Hello,’ she says, forcing a smile.

He pauses for a moment, trying to find the words. Hurt flickers in his eyes and Amber has to stifle the guilt she feels. ‘You look good,’ he manages.

‘You look knackered.’

He laughs, rubbing at the slightly stubbled skin on his cheek. ‘That’s what working fourteen-hour shifts a day does to a man. What brings you here?’

‘I found a girl on the beach. Head injury.’

He gets that serious ‘doctor’ face she was once so used to. ‘I see. Drunken fall?’

‘Maybe,’ Amber says, peering towards the cubicle where the girl is. ‘I don’t know though, something’s telling me it isn’t. I don’t recognise her from around here. She doesn’t remember anything.’

‘That can happen with head injuries … and hangovers.’ He looks at the small shop by the entrance to the hospital. ‘Are you getting her something then?’

Amber shakes her head. ‘No, leaving, I’m on my way out. I’ll leave the experts to it.’

‘But if she doesn’t know anyone …’ he begins in an uncertain tone, his voice trailing off.

‘I can’t just leave the gift shop, Jasper. I have just over a week to get it sorted before the Christmas market.’ Amber’s voice sounds harsher than she intended. ‘She’ll be fine, her parents will probably come running in any moment.’

Jasper keeps his eyes on her and, just from his look, Amber knows what he’s thinking. She knows him so well, can read every little quirk and facial expression. She’s sure it’s still the same for him too. They had been together for seven years, after all.

That changed ten years ago though. So much has changed.

He sighs. ‘Fine, I’ll check in on her then. I’m actually doing some training in neurology, even thinking of specialising in it.’

‘You’re moving from ER?’

‘We’ll see. I can report back when her parents arrive? If they arrive,’ he adds. ‘Still the same number?’ His voice is all businesslike now.

Amber nods. ‘You know me, I’ll never change it.’

He smiles slightly. ‘Yes, I do.’ That pained look again. He examines her face. ‘You keeping okay?’

‘Yep, same old same.’

‘And Rita and Viv?’

‘Same old insane.’

He laughs. ‘Yes, I miss seeing them around town.’ He’d moved out of Winterton Chine five years ago to the next village. When he’d messaged Amber to tell her, she’d felt a mixture of relief and regret. No more awkward encounters in town. But equally, no more chance of seeing him again, unless it involved a visit to the hospital, and nobody really savoured that.

‘Right, better go,’ Amber says. ‘Don’t want to leave Mum and Aunt Viv in charge of the shop for too long.’ She lifts her hand, gives a feeble wave, then walks off, aware of his eyes on her back.

When Amber arrives back at the beach huts, her mother and aunt are doing the foxtrot together on the icy beach as a man walking his dog looks on, bemused. They stop when Amber approaches.

‘You’re back already?’ her mother asks her, slightly out of breath.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Amber replies, walking into the shop and throwing her dark green coat to one side. ‘Did you sell anything?’

‘A blanket!’ Viv replies, smiling with pride.

‘What about the girl? She’ll be alone,’ Rita asks, ignoring her daughter’s question.

‘No she won’t,’ Amber says, checking the copy of the receipt her aunt had scrawled out for the blanket. ‘You knocked ten quid off?’ she exclaims in disbelief, waving the receipt about.

‘Fifty pounds is extortionate!’ Viv replies. ‘You can get them for thirty on Etsy.’

‘It’s the going rate, Viv,’ Amber says, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Jesus, I’m trying to keep my head above water here.’

‘Enough about the bloody blanket!’ Rita shouts at them both. ‘What about the girl? She’ll be all alone in that hospital!’

Amber fluffs up the remaining blankets then grabs her paintbrush and walks outside, the two women following. ‘Exactly, she’s in hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses.’

‘You should have stayed,’ Rita says, and Viv nods in support.

Amber turns to them. ‘Why? I don’t even know her!’

‘The man who helped you that night didn’t know you,’ her mum replies. ‘And he still sends us Christmas cards every year checking in on you, a whole thirty years later!’

Amber awkwardly holds the tin of paint against her hip with her bad hand so she can open the lid with her working hand. Then sets the tin down and dips the paintbrush in.

‘I don’t need your help any more today,’ she says without looking at the two women. ‘You can go have your tea and cake at Earl’s if you want,’ she adds dismissively, referring to the teashop in town. ‘They’ll be wondering where you are. Who’s going to pass on the town gossip otherwise?’

In the reflection of a small mirror Amber sees the two women register hurt on their faces. Amber bites her tongue. She’s taken it too far.

‘Is this your way of telling us to clear off?’ Viv says.

‘I have to focus on painting. I’m already behind,’ Amber says in a lighter voice, sweeping the paintbrush over the wood. ‘Needs some concentration, which is impossible with you two around,’ she adds, turning to give them a quick smile to try to ease the tension.

Her mother examines her face then nods quietly to herself. ‘Of course, love.’ She gives Amber a quick peck on the cheek. ‘As long as you’re okay?’ she asks, looking her daughter in the eye as Viv wrinkles her brow.

God, they knew her so well.

‘Fine! I’m perfectly fine,’ Amber lies as she aggressively sweeps the red paint up and down the wooden wall.

‘See you later, sweetheart,’ Viv says, stroking her face. Then the two sisters walk up the path and away from the beach arm-in-arm.

When they’re out of sight, Amber stops painting and slumps down onto her stool, looking out towards the vast empty beach. Ice laces the pebbles and in the distance the sea lies calm beneath the grey skies. More snow, her mum said. It’s not here yet but Amber suddenly feels stifled, buried under memories and the feel of frost on her fingers.

She glances back up towards her mother and aunt. Their heads are bent close together, lips moving. She imagines the conversation:

‘If little Katy’d lived, she’d be a teenager like the girl on the beach,’ her mother would be saying.

‘Yes, I thought the same,’ her aunt would reply.

‘Ten years. Can you believe it’s been ten years since we lost the wee girl?’

Amber puts her head in her hands and closes her eyes, allowing herself to remember the feel of Katy’s warmth in her arms and the sound of her giggle bursting out of her little body in a fit of happiness. When it was cold like this, she yearned for those stiflingly warm summer nights The Chine had experienced the month Katy was born. Amber would feed Katy in her nursery, looking out of the vast windows towards the sea. Jasper would sometimes pass in the hallway to go to the toilet, smiling with love in his eyes.

A violent wave suddenly crashes to shore, splashing onto the iced beach. Summer disappears in Amber’s mind, replaced by the sound of urgent rain on the window pane she’d heard that awful evening. She could still feel the scorching heat of her daughter’s skin beneath her fingers as she sat beside her small bed, watching as her breath grew more laboured.

‘It’s just a little virus, Em,’ Jasper had said, walking in and putting his hand on Amber’s shoulder. ‘We’re getting loads of cases at the moment in A&E and every single one has recovered within a day or two. She just needs to get over the worst of it. Go get some sleep, I’ll stay up with her.’

‘No,’ Amber had said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t sleep. Her breathing doesn’t sound right. Listen!’

‘Because she’s blocked up! We can’t do this every time she’s ill, babe. And God knows there will be plenty of times like this, especially when she goes to school.’

But there were no other times, no school either. An hour later, a rash appeared and Jasper went from relaxed to stricken, running with his daughter’s small body in his arms through the rain to get her into hospital. Amber knew then. She knew how serious it was, like she’d have known from the start if she’d been there when Katy had been sent home from pre-school, ill. But instead she’d been at some private doctor Jasper had recommended to look into prosthetic fingers. He’d had enough of her complaining how long it took her to renovate pieces to sell in the shop. But if she hadn’t been at that bloody appointment, if she’d seen the way Katy was from the start, maybe her maternal instincts would have sent her to the hospital sooner.

The next morning little Katy, the light of their lives, was gone for ever and with her Amber and Jasper’s marriage.

Amber crunches her good hand into a fist, feeling the tears starting to trail down her cheeks. Katy would have been light-haired like the girl, maybe a hint of the red hair Amber shared with her mother and sister. Strawberry blonde was what her mother called it the first time she’d seen Katy after Amber had given birth to her. ‘My little strawberry,’ she’d whispered, kissing her granddaughter’s soft cheek. It had been particularly hard for Rita. Amber could hear it in her voice when she’d called her from the hospital in the middle of the night. Just a few weeks away from her fourth birthday, the same age Amber had lost her fingers to frostbite. The memories must have come flooding back for Rita. All Amber could think was she wished she’d died that day, then she wouldn’t have to endure the pain of losing the light of her life all those years later. Selfish, really. But true. It was unbearable.

Still is.

Amber looks down the beach. She hates being alone with herself when she has these thoughts.

‘Come on,’ she whispers to herself as she forces herself out. ‘This hut won’t paint itself.’

As she paints over the next few hours, she tries to keep her mind on the job in hand but can’t help but notice there aren’t any customers. She’d not sold a jot the past week apart from the blanket, and her aunt and mother had done that. What was she doing wrong? She’d focused on the bestsellers, mainly the items she renovated: the small stools she’d picked up from charity shops, turned into side tables. The antique framed mirrors cleaned and spruced up. It was all on-trend: distressed look with pastels. So why were sales down this winter?

Deep down she knows why: she simply can’t produce stuff quick enough. If she had two good hands, it might be a different story. She did this a lot, thought about the what-ifs. A guaranteed way to distract herself. She’d had a talent for renovating items, even at a young age. She lost her fingers a few months after starting school and her mother talked about how her teachers marvelled at how skilled Amber was before her accident; she’d had a knack of turning cardboard boxes and plastic bottles into something pretty, even at just four. She’d overheard Viv once saying to a friend: ‘Amber could’ve done great things if she’d not lost those fingers of hers.’

Amber looks down at the stumps on her hand in frustration. One stupid moment going out in the snow when she wasn’t supposed to, and the course of her life had been altered.

Well, there’s nothing she can do about it now, is there?

Maybe she needs to think about reducing her opening hours, finding a job in town? She takes in a sharp breath. Does she really want to do that? Her mortgage is small, the apartment she lives in tiny. She has minimal outgoings. It isn’t necessary. And anyway, what the hell can she do with her useless hand? It takes her what feels like treble the amount of time to do everyday things – including painting.

‘Argh!’ she shouts in frustration. She throws her paintbrush down, red paint splattering on the pebbles. She makes herself a hot chocolate with the small kettle she has in the hut and walks out onto the sand, blowing on her drink to cool it down. As she does that, she tries to blow her worries away too.

She looks towards the hospital again and imagines her little Katy there, alone, scared, confused. Amber and Jasper had been with her to the end, holding her hands and whispering in her ear, trying not to look at all the wires coming out of her tiny body. Amber had that, at least. The knowledge her daughter hadn’t had to endure it alone.

But this poor girl, in hospital with no idea of who she was and where she came from.

‘For God’s sake. Now I’m going to have to go to her, aren’t I?’ She quickly places her paints inside before closing the hut and rushing towards town.




Chapter Three (#ulink_a155e8a9-e59b-5ffb-91de-22267ea440a8)


As Amber strides up the road and into town, the skies are gloomy, so gloomy the shop owners have turned on their Christmas lights. They sparkle red, blue and green in the shop windows, Christmas music tinkling out. People pass, many smiling in greeting at Amber.

Soon the town square will be filled with festive market stalls. Some of them will be selling produce Amber had sourced, handed over in exchange for promises to send customers down to the beach.

The hospital comes into sight. Amber walks in.

‘There was a girl who came in this morning,’ she says when she gets to the reception area. ‘The one found on the beach?’

A glum-looking receptionist wearing an elf hat looks Amber up and down. ‘Yes. And how can I help you?’

‘I was the one who found her. I’d like to see her, if possible?’

The receptionist narrows her eyes at Amber. ‘How do I know that?’

Amber rolls her eyes in exasperation. ‘Seriously?’ She peers into the ward. ‘Is Doctor Fiore on duty?’

The receptionist’s eyes flicker with confusion. ‘He is.’

‘Can you tell him Amber’s here? He can vouch for me.’

The receptionist picks up her phone, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Amber. As she pages Jasper, Amber leans against the counter, taking in the hobbling patients and sullen-looking children. Winter means ice-related falls and viruses galore. Jasper was always his busiest at this time of year. She well remembers the nights huddled up in front of the fire alone, then the joy of him returning and the hot baths they’d share as she scrubbed away his day.

A moment later he appears, striding down the corridor, his holly-and-ivy tie tucked into his shirt. ‘Is everything okay, Amber?’ he asks.

‘This woman won’t let me see the girl,’ Amber explains.

Jasper turns his smile onto the receptionist. ‘It’s all right, Kathleen. Amber was the one who found her. I’ll take her to the ward.’

‘So sorry, Doctor Fiore,’ the receptionist says, her face flushing.

Jasper shakes his head. ‘It’s fine, really, you were only doing your job.’

The woman beams.

‘Looks like you still have a way with the ladies,’ Amber says as Jasper leads her towards the lifts.

Jasper shoots her a look. It had always been a joke between them, how the staff had little crushes on Jasper. It was even funnier as Jasper didn’t seem to notice it at all. But it was obvious to Amber, especially when she attended any of his work get-togethers and saw the way the young girls, some men too, would blush when Jasper talked to them. She didn’t feel she could compete really, not with her deformed hand. That was always her problem. She supposed she was attractive enough with her curves and rosy freckled cheeks; in fact, she knew it from the way men would chat her up. But she was always so aware of her hand. It made her so insecure. Jasper said she was imagining it but he didn’t see things through her eyes, the flickering change in expression whenever she met new people, the sudden pretending that they hadn’t noticed. When she told him that, he’d counter that of course they’d noticed. But so what, it didn’t make her any less attractive to them.

‘I checked on her earlier,’ Jasper says now as they step into the lift. As the doors close, Amber is suddenly aware of their proximity, the subtle scent of the shower gel he always used filling her head with memories: his lips on her neck, the feel of her wedding ring slipping onto her finger as he smiled into her eyes, the sight of him holding their newborn, examining every part of Katy’s tiny little face.

As Jasper looks at her now, she knows he is thinking the same. All those memories, the good and the bad.

‘Is she okay then?’ Amber says stiffly. ‘The girl?’

He nods. ‘They did a CT scan. She has some damage to her temporal lobe,’ he adds, gesturing to the side of his head just behind his ear. ‘That will explain the memory loss.’

‘Is it permanent?’

He shakes his head. ‘Hopefully not. These injuries can be unpredictable though. She was rather distressed when I saw her. Must be scary being on her own in a town and hospital she doesn’t recognise.’ He shoots Amber a loaded look.

‘Oh, don’t give me that look, Jasper,’ she says. ‘It’s easy for you on your secure doctor’s wage to have the odd day off work. You still get paid. But for every hour I’m away from the shop, I lose money, not to mention precious time to finish painting it.’

He holds her gaze and she stares defiantly back at him. He looks like he’s about to say something then he shakes his head, rubbing at his forehead. ‘I’m too tired to argue with you, Amber.’

‘I didn’t realise we were arguing.’

He smiles. ‘That used to be my phrase.’

Amber can’t help but smile back. Jasper was so laid back, he didn’t even realise when Amber was angry at him. ‘You do realise we were just having an argument, right?’ she used to say to him.

The doors ping open and they both walk out. Jasper leads her towards the children’s ward and she pauses. The memories of being in there scorch her insides. It must be even harder for Jasper being here too, she thinks. He can’t escape the last place he saw his daughter.

‘We’re not sure of her age,’ he explains, eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Thought it best we pop her in the children’s ward, just in case she’s under sixteen.’

‘I think she’s older than sixteen,’ Amber says, swallowing her fear of entering that ward again after all these years.

‘Like I said, we can’t be sure. And the children’s ward is a gentler environment anyway.’

They walk into the ward, Jasper using his card to let them in. A nurse looks up as they approach.

‘Why, hello again, Jasper. Can’t keep away from this ward, can you?’ she asks flirtatiously. Then she notices Amber. The nurse straightens up. ‘How can I help, Doctor?’

Amber looks from the nurse to Jasper and back again. Was she imagining it or was there something going on between them? She feels jealousy curl like a snake at the pit of her stomach. Silly really. It’s been ten years, after all. Jasper must have had many relationships since.

Jasper coughs, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘We’ve come to see the girl who was found on the beach.’

‘Ah yes, our Jane Doe,’ the nurse replies.

‘She’s not dead,’ Amber snaps.

The nurse’s face hardens. ‘I didn’t say she was.’

‘Amber found her,’ Jasper says quickly, trying to diffuse the tension. ‘She’d like to visit her.’

The nurse nods. ‘Right, well, come with me then.’

Luckily, the ward looks different from how it was ten years ago. New paintings on the walls. New beds. New curtains around the cubicles. Amber tells herself it isn’t the same one where she held her daughter as she died. It helps that there are Christmas decorations everywhere too, the staff wearing different items as nods towards the seasonal time of year: gingerbread tights, tinselled hair.

The nurse leads them to a cubicle at the end of the ward concealed by a blue curtain with fish shapes on it. She opens the curtain and peeks in with a smile. ‘We have a visitor for you, love.’

Amber walks in with Jasper, feeling bad she hasn’t brought anything. Grapes. A magazine even. The girl sits up in bed and smiles weakly. She looks worn out, even paler than earlier. A thick dressing is wound around her head and her thin arms stick out from a pale green smock.

‘You came back,’ she says when Amber walks to her bed.

Amber bites her lip. She should never have left. ‘Of course! I just needed to make sure I shut the shop properly, that’s all. How are you?’

The girl scratches at her dressing. ‘Confused.’

‘I presume Doctor Rashad explained about your injury?’ Jasper asks, looking at the clipboard at the end of the bed.

The girl nods. Amber sits down next to the girl’s bed and Jasper takes the seat on the other side. As he does so, Amber gets a flash of that night ten years before, one either side of Katy’s small bed, right in this very ward, one small hand in each of their hands.

Jasper catches Amber’s eye and she can tell he’s thinking the same.

He looks back at the girl. ‘So, any memories come back to you?’

The girl nods. ‘Little things. Like a man with a beard, a black beard. Curtains with robins on them.’ She scrunches up her covers in frustration. ‘But that’s it. That’s all I can remember.’

‘That’s more than this morning,’ Amber says gently. ‘That’s good.’

‘Not good enough though,’ the girl says, turning to look out at the window towards the sea.

‘We’ll get you there,’ Jasper says. ‘Have the police been yet?’

‘Tomorrow – they want to give me more time to remember,’ the girl replies. She puts her hand up to her dressing again. ‘Do you reckon they think someone deliberately hurt me? Is that why the police are coming?’

Amber tilts her head to one side. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘There’s no reason to think that,’ Jasper says softly. ‘Debris was found in your injury, according to the note, so there’s a chance it was just a fall.’

‘Debris could get there if someone injured me and I fell,’ the girl says.

Amber leans forward. ‘Have you remembered something?’

The girl’s eyes flicker and then she looks away, shrugging. ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbles.

Jasper’s pager buzzes. He looks at it and sighs. ‘I’m needed,’ he says, standing up. ‘But you’re in good hands with Amber. Keep me posted, won’t you?’ he asks Amber.

Amber nods, then turns back to the girl when he leaves. ‘Do you need anything? Another drink?’ she asks, reaching for the empty plastic cup on the table. As she does, she notices a small, dark leather notebook on it.

The girl follows her gaze. ‘They found that in my pocket. Not much use though. Just lots of notes about animals.’

‘Can I take a look?’ Amber asks.

The girl shrugs. ‘Sure.’

Amber picks it up and unwinds the leather string around it. She flicks through it. Its pages are crammed full of untidy writing alongside small pencil sketches of animals from penguins to polar bears to seals, all with notes written beneath them. There are dates at the top of some pages, ranging from 1989 to the present day. The girl wouldn’t have been born back then so it can’t be hers.

She goes back to the first page and reads it.

Ptarmigans are masters of adapting to their surroundings. Feathers will turn white in the winter to act as camouflage against the snow …




Chapter Four (#ulink_0fbb8018-229a-5546-8af6-338be4f497dd)

Gwyneth

Audhild Loch

24 December 1989


Ptarmigans are masters of adapting to their surroundings. Feathers will turn white in the winter to act as camouflage against the snow.

I came across the frozen loch by accident on Christmas Eve, lost after driving back from six months of filming on the Orkney Islands. I’d hired a car after jumping off the ferry at freezing Scrabster, right on the northern tip of Scotland. The rest of the crew were flying back to London but I decided to go on a road trip, staying at different hotels along the way. It would be easy, my producer Julia had told me as she’d handed over a battered map.

‘Easy,’ I hissed to myself now as I reversed out of another dead-end turning. ‘Yeah, right.’

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise really, considering that time Julia had got a whole crew lost while filming a documentary on emperor penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula. And now I was as lost as they had been, except I was alone, driving aimlessly down a dirt track in the middle of the Highlands, cursing Julia as I did so.

Then I caught sight of a glimmer of a loch on the icy horizon, fringed by frosty pine trees and a hump of a mountain beyond. I slowed the car down, gazing out at it. There was a lodge overlooking the lake with golden lights twinkling from its windows. I looked at the map that was angrily balled up on the passenger chair. Maybe Julia had been right – this was where the hotel was meant to be? I turned into a slip road leading to the lake, and followed it for five minutes. As I drew closer, I cursed. A gate stretched across the narrow road, a sign reading Private Property hanging from it.

‘Not a hotel then,’ I said with a sigh. I stopped the car anyway, getting out to stretch my legs and figure out my options. I could sleep in the car, God knows I’d done that a few times, but it was too bloody cold. Instead, I could drive all night, like I had been doing for the past hour. At least the engine would be on to keep me warm – not that said engine was that reliable, the number of turns it took to get it started each time.

Truth was that breaking down in that snow-sodden country, no matter how beautiful it was, wasn’t too appealing.

As I thought that, something caught my eye: a fluff of white soaring across the grey skies over the lake, its soft white wings almost blending into the sheet of wintry clouds above.

A ptarmigan!

I quickly pulled on my cream hat and wool-lined gloves before going to the boot to grab my camera. Hitching it onto my shoulder, I ran towards the lake before it was too late and that beautiful bird was gone from sight. The sun was starting to set now, meaning soon red and pink hues might start to seep through the gaps in the cloud, reflecting on the loch’s surface.

Perfect for filming.

Excitement made my heartbeat accelerate. I hitched a leg over the gate, being careful not to drop my heavy camera as I lifted my other leg over. It was a good ten-minute walk to reach the loch so I zipped up my white puffer coat – ideal for blending into the snow-clad landscape, just like the bird I was chasing – and headed down the road, searching the skies for more ptarmigans, the first one I saw long gone now.

Damn it.

I knew there would be more though. They rarely came down from the mountainsides so it must have been particularly cold for them to seek a semblance of warmth in the forest edges. I’d never seen one up close, but had long been fascinated by how their plume adapted to snowy environments in winter by turning completely white.

I reached the loch, placed my camera on the hard, icy ground, put my hands on my hips and surveyed the scene before me. It was silent and still, apart from the mist coming from my mouth and the sound of my breathing. Just as I’d predicted, the sky started turning pink, stunning against the stark white mountains and snow-fringed trees of the forest ahead. The house that stood on the edge of the loch was the only thing that wasn’t white here with its rich wooden walls and the Christmas lights twinkling from its vast windows.

The thought of Christmas gave me a brief pinch of sadness. It was just another day for me now, no different from other days. While the rest of the crew I’d been stationed with were desperate to get filming wrapped up so they could return to their families, I would have been happy for filming to continue. That time of year meant nothing to me now.

I picked up the camera and approached the gate blocking the way to the loch. The ‘Keep Out’ sign creaked in a swift, bitter wind. How would the lodge’s occupants feel about me trespassing on their land on Christmas Eve? I was usually able to talk my way out of situations … or into them. But this might be a step too far.

As I thought of that, I caught a glimpse of white against white again.

Another ptarmigan! Or maybe the same one, teasing me.

I quickly lifted my camera onto my shoulder, filming the bird as it flew over the loch. It hovered for a moment, seeming to look over at me, and my heart swelled. I still had to pinch myself every day to make sure I really was doing the job I’d dreamt of doing since I was a teenager. The dream had started when I’d had to leave home at fourteen and work at the hotel my aunt ran in London. There were so many horrible things about that time: how desperately I missed my parents, our only contact in the form of stilted weekly letters. My aunt had worked me so hard, pleased to have an extra pair of hands at no extra cost. ‘You need to earn your accommodation and food, Gwyneth,’ she’d say. ‘You’re lucky I took you on after what you did.’ Not to mention the way some of the male guests would pat my bottom or make lewd comments. The one bright light was the fact the hotel was close to the British Film Institute’s headquarters so it was often frequented by documentary-makers who would stay during events. I’d escape the sadness of my life by listening in to their conversations as I served them tea over breakfast, or beer and wine late into the night. Civil rights marches in Memphis or starving children in Nigeria. There would always be a harrowing story to listen to. But it was the stories from the wildlife documentary-makers that fascinated me the most. I’d always loved watching the BBC’s Survival documentaries as a kid, awestruck by the stampedes of the great African elephants and soaring flights of proud birds of prey. And I had been in the company of the very people who filmed shots like that! It thrilled me.

And now I was feeling that same thrill as I watched this rarely sighted bird, the colour of snow, swooping down beneath a pale pink sky before landing on the iced-over loch. I smiled as I imagined what my mentor Reg Carlisle, the famous wildlife documentary-maker, would say.

‘Keep quiet. Keep steady,’ he’d whisper. Then a wink. ‘Nice spot, Gwyneth.’

I felt the leather notepad in my pocket that he’d given me as a gift just before he died then I took a step forward, then another before I reached the loch, where I carefully tested the ice beneath my snow boots. It was set, surely strong enough to sustain my weight. I was tall but thin, weighing less than usual after all those months of living on boil-in-the-bag camp food.

I took a deep breath and stepped onto the loch.

The bird froze, peering up at me, and I froze with it, pleased the camera was rolling.

Then the sound of cracking ice pierced the air. The bird flung up into the sky and I cursed myself. I went to step back but there was another crack. I watched in horror as a line zigzagged away from my feet.

I leant down and slid my camera across the ice towards the loch’s banks, watching in relief as it glided to safety. But when I went to follow it, I suddenly plunged down, neck-deep in icy water.

I tried to grasp at the ice but it broke under my fingertips. The sub-zero temperature gripped me, making me begin to tremble uncontrollably.

This quick? Surely not?

I twisted around, paddling my legs and heaving myself onto a thicker ledge of ice, but I just slid back down, fully submerging this time, gasping for breath and the pain of the cold when I reemerged.

You’ve really done it this time, Gwyneth.

I looked towards the lodge. ‘Help!’ I called out through freezing lips. ‘Help!’ I said again, screaming this time.

As I said that, a piece of detached ice nearby floated towards me and smashed into my cheek. I fell sideways in shock, my hat falling off, freezing cold water swirling around my exposed head, the pain unbearable. I tried to grapple with the ice again but it broke, the fragments sliding over my freezing hands.

I kicked my legs, frantic now, gasping for breath, vision blurring.

I could feel myself growing weaker, my breath coming in spurts. Above me, the ptarmigan reappeared, circling around me, the feathers of its fluffy white wings lifting in the winter breeze. For a foolish moment, I hoped my camera was still capturing it, so close like I’d wanted.

Was this it, my last few moments alive? Of all the life-threatening positions I’d put myself in throughout my career so far, it had to be this that would take me: a frozen loch in my own country.

I thought of my parents then. Would they mourn my passing? Or feel relief I was gone?

Maybe relief. It was something I suddenly felt in that moment: relief I didn’t have to continue contending with the guilt, the sadness, the gaping hole left by their rejection. It was such a contrast to the fighting spirit people knew me for.

Finally, time to stop fighting.

But then Dylan appeared.




Chapter Five (#ulink_6a2b7591-383d-51ba-b104-d2f45e5fa028)


I heard Dylan before I saw him, the sound of his heavy boots on the still intact ice and his quick breath. Then I smelt cigars and whisky. He leaned over me, all coal-dark hair and eyelashes. There was a look of panic in his eyes. He wrapped one long arm around my chest, yanking me up from the freezing loch and carefully treading ice to walk me back to the loch’s banks.

When we got to the bank, I tried to wrap my arms around myself, the cold unbearable. Dylan placed his thick woollen coat around my shoulders then pulled me onto his lap and rubbed my arms. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked in a thick Scottish accent. ‘Tell me you’re okay.’

‘N-n-n-n-not the time to be m-m-m-making a pass,’ I managed to stutter.

Relief spread across his face. ‘If this is how men make passes at you, then God help you. Body warmth means life,’ he said with a quick smile that showed straight, white teeth.

I leant into him, exhausted, as he rubbed my arms. He was wearing a black jumper, its tough wool scratching at my freezing cheeks. We stayed like that a few moments before my trembling stopped. Then he leant over, one arm still wrapped around me, dragged a rucksack towards him and pulled a hip flask from it.

‘Whisky fixes everything,’ he said, biting the top off with his teeth and handing it to me.

‘Could you get any more Scottish?’ I asked, taking a sip and welcoming the warmth as it snaked through my insides.

His smile widened, his brown eyes sparkling as they explored my face.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘For God’s sake.’ I shoved the hip flask into his chest and stood up, swaying slightly. I was used to this, men trying it on. Frankly, it did my head in and distracted me from what I needed to do: my filming. I shook my head, trying to disperse the icy fingers clutching at my mind, and half stumbled, half jogged to the water’s edge, where I knelt down so I could grab my camera from a worryingly thin sheet of ice nearby.

Dylan laughed as he stood, revealing his full six foot three. ‘It’s just an aesthetic observation, not a come-on,’ he explained. ‘Don’t take it so hard. Anyway, you’re not exactly in any position to look unkindly upon me. You trespassed on my land, after all.’

‘So that’s your house then?’ I asked, gesturing towards the lodge.

‘My family’s home, the magnificent and mighty McCluskys,’ he said with a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

‘That’s one mighty house,’ I said, checking my camera.

‘And that’s an impressive piece of kit,’ he said. ‘You make films?’

‘Wildlife documentaries.’

He raised an impressed eyebrow. ‘The female David Attenborough.’

‘I’m the one behind the camera. You know, the ones that do the hard work?’

As I said that, I felt my head go hazy. I swayed slightly and Dylan clutched my arm. ‘I think we need to get you inside,’ he said, all the joviality gone from his face. ‘Get you warm.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, pulling my arm away from his grip. ‘I’ll get the engine started, turn the heaters on.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I have a warm house with access to a roaring fire, a bath and multiple clothing options thanks to my sisters … who will also be there, just in case you’re worried I’m an axe murderer,’ he added with a smile.

I couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘As long as your family forgive me for trespassing.’

‘Once they find out why, they’ll forgive you anything. This Christmas Eve will always be referred to as “that Christmas Eve the wildlife documentary-maker trespassed on our land”. Trust me, they’ll be delighted someone like you was the one doing it. What were you hoping to film here anyway, the bearded Scottish male?’ he asked, stroking his dark beard.

I shook my head. ‘I was filming a ptarmigan. I was actually lost and came across the loch.’

His handsome face lit up. ‘Beautiful birds. I see them a lot from the house, nestling up in the mountain there.’

We both looked towards the mountains and a hint of sadness flickered over his face. Then he turned to me, putting out his hand. ‘I’m Dylan, by the way.’

‘Gwyneth,’ I replied, taking his freezing hand and trying to ignore the spark of electricity between us.

As Dylan and I walked to the lodge, the sky turned a scarlet red, offering a stark contrast to the white of the lodge’s icy roof and the snow-fringed mountains beyond. It was really quite something.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ I said.

‘Yep,’ Dylan replied. But I sensed reluctance in his voice. I suppose he was used to the place.

When we got to the lodge, Dylan paused, taking a slug of whisky from his hipflask as he stared up at the windows. I couldn’t quite figure out the look on his face. It was like he was readying himself for battle. He turned and offered me some of his drink. I took his flask and had a quick sip before handing it back.

The lodge looked even bigger up close, fringed with a veranda and vast windows looking out over the lake. In one window was a Christmas tree that reached up towards a vaulted ceiling, scores of beautifully wrapped presents beneath it. A young boy of about four was sitting by a toy railway, watching in rapture as a small train letting out actual steam chugged by. Next to him, a black Labrador sat obediently. I wondered for a moment if the boy was Dylan’s son. Beyond the tree were two huge sofas facing each other, draped with fur throws, an ornate wooden coffee table between them, strewn with books and toys. Each window of the house had candles flickering in it, creating a warm, friendly glow.

As I took it in, I felt like a teenager again. After shifts at the hotel, I’d sometimes walk the streets of London at night, peering into the windows of the grand town houses nearby. I did it a lot at Christmas, imagining myself in there with my family. Remembering how it had once been, surrounded by the family I thought would for ever be devoted to me. I’d looked up the definition of ‘devotion’ once: Love, loyalty or enthusiasm for a person or activity. That summed up what being a parent is. Love, loyalty and enthusiasm … no matter what. But there had been a limit for my parents.

I noticed Dylan watching me, a slight wrinkle in his forehead. I forced a smile. ‘Very festive,’ I said, gesturing to the huge Christmas tree in the window.

‘The McCluskys don’t do anything by halves,’ he replied as we walked towards the front door. He opened it and gestured for me to step in before him. I was instantly struck by the contrast between the house’s chilly exterior and warm interior: inviting oak panelling, the smell of an open fire and Christmas spices, the delicious warmth of its air compared to the icy white setting outside. A large patterned rug lay in the middle of the hallway, and two wooden stairways swept up towards a balconied landing. Another Christmas tree stood at the back of the hall, so high the star at the top reached the top of the railing on the balcony. A stag-antler chandelier hung from the ceiling on chains, golden lights glistening.

It was just Dylan and me in the hallway, but I could hear talking in the distance, laughter, the faint trace of Christmas music tinkling from speakers. I could also hear people walking around on the floorboards above me. Perhaps they were getting ready for dinner in their rooms.

Now I felt even more like an impostor.

The sound of barking rang out and two glossy black Labradors came scooting through, nearly knocking me off my feet as they jumped up at me. ‘Down, down,’ Dylan said, shoving them out of the way. ‘Dad never trained them for anything but fetching game.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said, fussing over them. ‘I love dogs.’

Dylan helped me shrug my wet coat off. ‘I’ll show you to the guest room,’ he said. ‘You can have a bath, shower, whatever you prefer. I’ll dig some of my sisters’ clothes out for you.’

I hesitated. ‘Are you sure this is okay?’

‘You’ve had a near-death experience. Go sort yourself out, and I’ll warn the others we have a trespasser in our home,’ he added with a faint smile. He placed the wet items on a radiator and led me up the stairs. I held onto the rail, looking around me. There were no family photos on the walls, just shelves containing beautiful wooden sculptures of trees, animals, the lodge itself.

‘These are good,’ I said, pausing in front of one that depicted a stag standing proud in the middle of an iced loch.

He picked it up, smiling at he looked at it. ‘Of course they are. I did them.’

‘Really?’ I said looking at him in surprise. ‘Is it what you do for a living?’

He placed the sculpture back down again with a thud. ‘No, just a hobby,’ he replied tightly. ‘I work for the family business.’

‘And that is?’ I asked as we continued climbing the stairs.

‘Building homes like this,’ he said, gesturing around him.

I wanted to ask him if he enjoyed it, or if he’d rather be creating wooden sculptures for a job. The latter, I guessed from the look on his face, but I didn’t get the chance as just then a young woman walked out of one of the rooms. She was delicately boned but tall like Dylan, dark-haired too. She was wearing all black: black leggings, a long, mohair black jumper. I couldn’t figure out how old she was. She held herself like a teenager, maybe seventeen or eighteen, but there was a look in her eyes that suggested she might be older.

She stopped abruptly when she saw me, tilting her head in confusion.

‘This is my little sister Heather,’ he said. ‘Heather, meet Gwyneth. She nearly died trespassing our land so I thought I’d extend her the courtesy of a warm bath and dry clothes.’

‘Did you shoot her like the last person who trespassed?’ Heather asked, eyes narrowing as she looked me all over.

‘Not this time,’ Dylan replied with a sigh.

I didn’t know whether to take them seriously. But then they both laughed.

‘Only kidding.’ Heather stepped towards me, putting out her hand. ‘Welcome to the madhouse, Gwyneth.’

I shook her hand. It felt very small and very cold, a surprise considering how warm it was in the house.

‘Gwyneth makes wildlife documentaries,’ Dylan said. ‘You should see her camera.’

Heather smiled in excitement. ‘Wow, really?’

‘Yes, that was why I was on the lake.’ I was in a rush to explain. ‘I wanted to film a bird, a rare one.’

‘That’s ace, Mum and Dad would love the loch to be in a documentary.’

‘Heather wants to make films,’ Dylan said, smiling affectionately at his sister. ‘She’s doing film studies at Leeds University.’

‘That’s cool,’ I said.

She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, I want to direct them. Do you know anything about directing?’

‘A little.’

‘Excellent, we can talk about it over dinner,’ Heather declared as she went to skip down the stairs.

‘Oh, I’m not staying for dinner,’ I called out after her. ‘I’m just going to get out of these clothes then be on my way.’

‘Absolutely not,’ a deep voice from below said. I looked down the stairs to see a man in his fifties or sixties walk out from beneath the stair balcony. He was wearing an expensive-looking crimson cashmere jumper and dark blue cords. I could see Dylan in him: the dark, mischievous eyes, the handsome face and broad shoulders. I could see he was made of money too. There was something about people who had money; I saw it in the guests at the hotel who stayed in the presidential suite. A hands-in-pockets confidence that came with knowing the zero signs on your bank statement were a sign of good rather than bad.

Dylan leaned over the banister. ‘Dad, this is Gwyneth. She makes wildlife documentaries.’

‘So I just heard. Now this is what I call a welcome visitor.’ Dylan’s father walked up the stairs and put his hand out to me. ‘Oscar McClusky.’

I looked at his smiling face in surprise as I took his hand. ‘I trespassed on your land, you know.’

Oscar laughed. ‘As long as you got some good footage of that beautiful ptarmigan I saw gliding across the loch?’

‘You saw me?’

‘Who do you think told Dylan to go rescue you and bring you to dinner?’

I couldn’t help but smile, shaking my head in surprise. ‘So it was all part of your grand plan?’

‘I was intrigued,’ Oscar admitted. ‘A young lady with a camera like that. I didn’t realise the ice was so thin. We were skating on it only yesterday, weren’t we, Heather?’

He went to his daughter and pulled her close to him as she blinked rapidly. Then she smiled up at him, nodding. I had a flashback of my own father pulling me close for a cuddle. It was quickly replaced by a memory of us standing outside my aunt’s hotel all those years ago, avoiding each other’s gaze, unsure how to say goodbye.

‘You’ll stay for dinner?’ Heather asked me, eyes hopeful.

I looked at Dylan and he shrugged. ‘You might as well. The next place you’ll be able to grab a bite to eat is two hours’ drive away, as the village has shut down for Christmas.’

My tummy rumbled, trying to assert itself. Truth was, I was freezing and hungry. The last thing I wanted to do was return to my car. Plus the family intrigued me. ‘Thank you. That would be lovely,’ I said.

Half an hour later, I walked down the stairs in Heather’s jeans, smoothing down the ice-blue cashmere jumper she’d lent me. It still had its tags on it, the price too: £150! I bought most of my clothes from a cheap outdoors shop I’d found in East London, thick fleeces and trousers ideal for the work I did. I did have the occasional expensive dress for the awards ceremonies and industry events I was sometimes invited to, and the odd date too – when I had the time and felt like company. Expensive jumpers like this were alien to me though.

I stopped in the hallway, hearing the sound of laughter from behind one of the doors. I twisted my long blonde hair around so it fell over one shoulder to look more presentable before I entered the room. Then I pushed the door open to reveal a huge dining area, and several people smiling up at me from a long mahogany table laden with food. I quickly checked it to make sure there were some vegetarian items for me and there was. The ceiling sloped down one side of the dining room, spotlights travelling up it. At the other end was a triangle window that took up the entire wall and looked out onto the stunning snow-topped mountains.

Dylan stood up, pulling the chair next to him out for me. Heather sat on the other side of my chair, and Oscar was at the head of the table by the window. Next to Dylan were two men who looked like him. Opposite them were two women and the young boy I’d seen earlier. Sitting in front of me at the other head of the table was an older woman with dark hair in a plait down her back. She turned and looked me up and down, no smiles.

They were all dark, tall and Amazonian apart from one of the women who was petite with blonde hair cut short.

‘This is Gwyneth, Mother,’ Dylan said to the woman at the head of the table as I took the seat next to him.

‘The trespasser,’ Oscar said with a wicked smile.

I felt my face flush.

‘It’s fine,’ the man next to Dylan said. ‘You had good reason, so I hear. I’m Cole, by the way.’ He was clean-shaven and handsome, wearing a dark suit and sitting straight-backed in his chair. He looked very much like Dylan but had their father’s blue eyes instead of their mother’s brown ones. ‘And this is my wife, Rhonda,’ he said, gesturing towards the blonde woman sitting across from me. ‘And that there is our boy, Alfie.’

Rhonda smiled at me. ‘I hear you’re a documentary-maker, how fascinating. Did you hear that, Alfie? This lady makes films about animals.’

The boy looked up from playing with some toy cars and gazed at me curiously. ‘Do you see dinosaurs?’

Everyone laughed, including Dylan’s mother, whose face lit up. I could see Heather in her now, the more elfin-like features compared to Oscar’s Romanesque handsomeness. Slimmer and more ethereal too.

‘She’d have to travel all the way to the land before time for that,’ the man next to Cole said. He looked younger than Dylan and Cole, slimmer and more elfin-featured too, like his mother and Heather. But he was still tall, broad by most standards, handsome too. He was wearing a jumper, but it wasn’t plain like the others. Instead, it was black with primary-coloured blocks around the arms, and his black hair was spiked up. Clearly a lover of fashion like some of the younger editors I sometimes worked with in the States.

‘I’m Glenn,’ he said, waving at me.

‘The baby of the family,’ Dylan explained.

‘My baby,’ his mother said, stroking his arm.

He jokingly swept her arm away. ‘I’m twenty-five, Mother.’

‘Oh, so you don’t want that loan you asked me for this morning?’ she asked, raising a cool eyebrow.

He leant in towards her, pretending to gurgle like a baby. ‘Yes please, Mama.’

Everyone laughed.

‘I’m Alison,’ the woman sitting beside Rhonda said. ‘One of the sisters,’ she added. She was wearing a long flowing dress and a tribal necklace, henna tattoos on her hands. She looked tanned compared to the others and I guessed was the oldest of the siblings, maybe in her late thirties.

‘Nice to meet you all,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you inviting me into your home despite—’

‘Illegally entering our land,’ Dylan’s mother finished for me in a cold voice, all the warmth she’d just shown to her family gone.

Everyone went quiet. It was clear she was the head of this family.

‘Mother …’ Dylan said in a low voice.

‘But she did, didn’t she?’ she replied.

‘For the right reasons, Mairi,’ her husband said.

‘No, she’s right,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I get carried away sometimes. Someone I used to know …’ I swallowed, the memory of my recent loss still so painful. I looked down at my napkin, pulling at it with my fingers. ‘He told me there’s a fine line between determination and rudeness.’ I looked up into Mairi’s eyes, suddenly so desperate for her approval, for all of their approval. ‘I crossed that line today. This is your land, your home. I was wrong and I will leave now, if that’s what you feel is best.’

I went to get up but she raised her hand to stop me. Then she gestured towards the candles that flickered on the sill of a small window above. ‘Each Christmas, we place candles in our windows to let strangers know they are welcome. You are welcome,’ she said, gesturing for me to sit back down. I did so hesitantly. ‘Just don’t trespass again,’ she added with a wink. The tension in the room suddenly dispersed. She turned to her family. ‘Shall we eat?’

Over the next two hours, we ate dinner, drank wine too, lots of it, served by a middle-aged woman with white hair who I presume was their housemaid.

I learnt Oscar had worked his way up from being a builder and woodsman to run a multi-million-pound building company that supplied many business and private owners with wood-clad buildings like this. His oldest son, Cole, was the managing director, Oscar taking a back seat for a reason nobody made clear. But I guessed from the fact he didn’t drink more than a glass of wine and resisted second helpings that it might have something to do with his health, despite how fit he looked.

Glenn, the youngest brother, wrote and illustrated children’s books that could be found in bookstores around the country, and Dylan’s older sister Alison, after ‘the most God-awful divorce’, as she described it to me, was trying to figure out her place in life, travelling and taking photos for a book she was planning. Cole’s wife Rhonda dedicated her time to volunteering and being a mum.

Despite their clear advantages – the apparent wealth and freedom with which they were able to live their lives – they seemed very down to earth. Maybe it was because of Mairi, who clearly kept a tight rein on them, scolding them with a look if any of them said something out of turn.

As they all talked, I watched Dylan at times. He could be playful and charming like his father, but I could see a hint of the serious intent his mother possessed. I thought of what he’d said earlier – ‘You’re beautiful’ – and realised he was simply stating what he thought, as his mother seemed to do. There really was nothing seedy about it.

‘Where’s your next shoot, Gwyneth?’ Oscar asked me.

‘Iceland. There’s a beach there made of ice where seals like to flock. It’s in the southeast on the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.’

‘I know it,’ Oscar said with a smile. ‘In fact, the first lodge Dylan ever worked on is based an hour or so away in Kirkjubæjarklaustur.’

Dylan looked up, eyes alight. ‘God, I loved working on that place.’

I smiled at his enthusiasm. Maybe he did enjoy his job?

‘How did you get into making documentaries, Gwyneth?’ Cole asked.

‘I had a mentor, Reginald Carlisle.’

‘That man’s a legend,’ Oscar said. ‘In fact, I have his book upstairs.’

Surprise registered on Mairi’s face. ‘He passed away a few months ago, didn’t he?’

I nodded. It still hurt to think of it, holding his frail hand as his ninety-year-old body finally gave in.

Mairi fixed me with her dark gaze. ‘He clearly meant a lot to you.’

Dylan watched me, the whole table silent.

‘He did,’ I whispered.

I thought back to the first time I met Reg. Some of the wildlife documentary-makers at the hotel I worked at would talk of one particular man with reverent awe. I looked out for him and eventually discovered who he was, a man in his sixties who would always be the first down for breakfast at 6.30am. He barely said a word and would often be reading a wildlife book, hardly looking up as I served him his breakfast, thick silver eyebrows knitted in concentration.

One day, while I was at the library borrowing one of the books I’d seen him read, I was shocked to find one with his face on the back. In the Deep Alaskan Winter by Reginald Carlisle. It turned out he was one of the pioneers of wildlife filming, a legend in the documentary-making community. I read that book every night, disappearing into the beautiful but savage Alaskan landscape he described, a landscape that nearly claimed his life when he was trapped in heavy snow there for two weeks while making a series for the BBC.

When I saw him again, I placed the book on his table as he ate breakfast. He paused from his reading, his blue eyes rising to examine my face.

‘I was wondering if you could sign it?’ I said, trying to keep the stammer from my voice. The truth was, he’d become a hero of sorts to me. Other teenagers were into John, Paul, George and Ringo, but my rockstar was a wildlife documentary-maker. No wonder the other girls at the hotel didn’t talk to me!

Reg opened the book and after a brief pause, scribbled on it before snapping it shut and handing it back without a word, his attention quickly returned to the book he was reading. Only when I got back to my little room in the hotel’s attic that night did I see what he’d written.

Next time, buy a book instead of stealing one from a library.

The next morning, as I poured him his tea, I battled over whether to talk to him again. ‘I didn’t steal the book,’ I eventually managed in a small voice.

He gave me a silent look.

‘I extended the loan,’ I continued.

‘Then gave it to me to desecrate.’

I dipped my chin to my chest. ‘I know. I’d buy a copy except—’

‘You’re a poor waitress. How old are you anyway?’

‘Sixteen,’ I lied. Truth was, I was fifteen, just. And while it was fine to work at that age, my aunt didn’t like me broadcasting it. ‘I don’t get paid much.’

‘So? I used to be like you once, didn’t have two pennies to rub together,’ he said, fire in his eyes. ‘But I did something about it. And you can too if you set your mind to it.’

The next day was a rest day. I got one day off a week and usually spent it walking around London alone, visiting the free museums and attractions. But that day, I pulled on my hand-me-down winter coat and stomped out into the cold armed with a wood-effect Filmo camera I’d ‘borrowed’ off a documentary-maker. He’d been so distracted drinking the night before he didn’t notice me sneak it from his side. I was planning to return it to him when I finished. Well, to the hotel’s lost property anyway, in the hope he’d mention its loss to reception. Sure, I felt slightly guilty. But at least he’d get it back. There were many things in my fifteen years I’d loved and lost, never to be seen again.

The night before, I’d barely got any sleep, playing with the damn thing and trying to figure out how it worked until I finally cracked it at 3am.

As I stepped out of the hotel with it in my bag, I thought of the techniques Reg had mentioned in his book:

Shoot tight. Zoom in on a stabbing hoof. A pecking beak. Two stark wide eyes. These shots can be used to create a story in the editing room.

Get down to the animal’s level, even if it means lying in dirt on your belly.

Film with the sunlight on your back if you want to see the animal’s true colours.

I must have looked a right sight that morning, lying belly down on London’s grimy paths, camera pointing out towards the Thames as I filmed a grey heron diving into water. Or lying on a bench and looking up to the sky to film pigeons in flight. Of course, I wished I was in Alaska instead, filming polar bears, but this would need to do. As I made my way back to the hotel, I walked with my head held high despite the grime all over my skirt. This was the most exciting thing I’d done since leaving home.

I found Reg seated at his usual spot in the hotel’s restaurant at lunch, sipping tea as he read another book. I don’t think he recognised me at first without my black and white waitress uniform on, my long hair down when it was usually up.

I nervously placed the camera on his table. ‘I set my mind to some filming, like you advised.’

‘I did, did I?’ He looked down at the camera, face expressionless. ‘Where did you get this camera? Looks a lot like the one Gerald over there has lost,’ he said, gesturing towards the cameraman I’d borrowed it from who was talking frantically to the reception desk.

I swallowed, twisting a button on my coat between my fingers. ‘I plan to return it.’

That was the first time I saw Reg smile. ‘I’m tempted to say don’t bother; I’ve never liked the man. What do you want me to do with this then?’ he asked, gesturing to the camera.

‘I thought you might have some way of viewing it to see if what I’ve filmed is any good?’ I asked tentatively.

As I said that, I felt a presence behind me. Reg quietly slipped the camera into the bag at his feet and I turned to see my aunt smiling tightly.

‘Is this young lady bothering you, Mr Carlisle?’ she asked, flashing me a hard look.

‘Not at all,’ Reg retorted. ‘She saw me drop some money earlier and was kind enough to return it to me.’

My aunt relaxed. ‘Good, we ensure all our staff hold the highest of moral standards. Now come away, Gwyneth, let Mr Carlisle finish his lunch in peace.’

As she marched me off, I glanced over my shoulder at Reg who winked at me. I turned back, suppressing a smile.

I barely slept again that night, wondering if Reg had managed to watch the footage. When I walked downstairs, pulling at the stiff collar of my uniform, he was waiting for me in reception.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

I peered into the breakfast room. I was already running late.

‘Just five minutes,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

I took a deep breath and followed him towards the hotel’s small cinema. When we got in, the projector was all set up and on the screen was my footage.

‘Most of it is awful,’ he said as he gestured for me to sit down. ‘There’s nothing here we don’t know already about pigeons. The composition is terrible, not to mention the lack of focus.’ My heart sank. ‘Except this,’ he added with a smile as he leant forward to stare at the screen. ‘Now this, this is exquisite.’

I followed his gaze, seeing the brief footage I’d filmed of a large pigeon feeding three tiny baby pigeons.

‘We rarely see baby pigeons, as they remain in their nests until they are fully grown,’ he explained, ‘and many nests are so high, we humans don’t get the chance to see them. A sign of the bird’s devotion to its young.’

‘So it’s good I got a shot of them?’

‘Very good. I need an assistant. When can you start?’

I looked at him in surprise. ‘You want me as an assistant?’

He nodded and my heart soared with hope. I made a silent promise to myself then: I would never let him down, not like I’d let my parents down. And I didn’t, not in all those years I worked with him.

And now he was gone. I had nobody. I felt the grief rise up inside.

‘What about your family, Gwyneth?’ Oscar asked quietly as the maid poured me more wine. ‘Were you on your way to visit them for Christmas?’

I took a quick sip of wine. ‘I don’t have any family. In fact,’ I said, placing my napkin down, ‘I really better be heading back.’

‘Have you seen the time?’ Dylan exclaimed. I looked up at a large clock. Nearly nine. ‘You can’t drive back now.’

‘Yes, you must stay,’ Heather said.

I shrugged. ‘I’ve driven in the dark before, on ice too.’

‘Not on these roads,’ Dylan said.

‘You really must stay,’ Glenn said. ‘At least until dawn. Plus, you’ve been drinking. Right, Mum?’

Mairi examined my face then nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Only two glasses. No, really, I must get back,’ I said, pushing my chair back.

‘But it’s Christmas tomorrow,’ Alison said.

‘Exactly,’ Cole replied. ‘Gwyneth doesn’t want to be spending it with strangers. If she wants to go, let her.’

‘Better with strangers than alone,’ Heather said sadly.

‘I’m used to being alone,’ I insisted. ‘Anyway, Christmas Day is like any other day to me, really.’

They all looked at me in horror and Dylan laughed. ‘You have just uttered blasphemy in the McClusky household. Look,’ he said as he gazed at his family. ‘Cole’s right, if Gwyneth wants to go, we can’t stop her.’ He stood with me. ‘I’ll walk you to your car, Gwyneth.’

‘Thank you. And thank you again, everyone else,’ I added, looking around the table. ‘You’ve been so welcoming and so generous.’

I felt myself getting choked up, Jesus! I quickly turned away and walked out, catching a glimpse of everyone exchanging looks as Dylan strode after me.

I expected it to be pitch black when we got outside ten minutes later, but instead the moon, large and patient above the mountains, shed enough light to illuminate the narrow road ahead, my car a white blip at the end of it. It was cold though, so bitter I thought my eyelashes might freeze off right then and there.

‘You have such a great family,’ I said to Dylan as walked towards my car together.

‘They have their moments.’ He was quiet for a few moments then smiled. ‘So, what are your plans for tomorrow?’

‘I’ll probably go through my reels.’

‘Christmas Day really is just another day for you, isn’t it?’

I laughed. ‘Not everyone has this idyllic family life, Dylan.’ I got a glimpse of the colourful Christmas tree I used to have as a kid, red, blue and golden tinsel, baubles that kept falling off, my mother’s laughter. ‘Some of us are quite happy in our own skin, alone but not lonely.’

He put his gloved hands up. ‘No, I get it, you don’t need to explain yourself to me! In fact, I’m jealous.’

I looked at him in surprise. ‘Jealous?’

He pulled a grey woolly hat from his coat pocket and put it on. ‘I’ve thought about it once or twice, just getting away for Christmas.’

‘But you have a lovely family.’

His jaw tensed. ‘It can be overwhelming at times.’

We walked in silence until we got to the gate. Dylan opened the padlock with a key that hung from a heavy collection of them, then pushed the gate open, letting me through. As I passed him, I caught a hint of his musky aftershave and the whisky he’d been drinking. It made my breath stutter. I quickened my stride towards my car, opened the boot and put my camera inside as Dylan leant against the fence, watching me with his arms crossed.

‘Which hotel are you staying at then?’ he asked.

‘The Heighton.’

‘That’s a good two-hour drive.’

I felt in my pocket for the new updated map Cole had lent me and lifted the flask of coffee the maid had made me. ‘This will fuel me.’

Dylan stepped away from the fence, took his gloves off and put out his hand. ‘It’s been good to meet you, Gwyneth.’

I took his hand, felt it warm and calloused. It was double the size of mine. I looked up into his handsome face, the moonlight highlighting his distinctive cheekbones, the feline curve of his dark eyes. It felt like he’d walked in from another century, that he didn’t belong in the real world I knew, and suddenly I felt a surge of regret. Was I making a mistake leaving like this?

Ridiculous!

I quickly slipped my hand from his before I begged him to take me back to the lodge. ‘Good to meet you too, Dylan,’ I said. ‘And thank you for saving me.’ I walked around to the driver’s side and smiled at him over the car’s roof. ‘Have a good day celebrating baby Jesus’s birth, okay?’

He cracked a smile. ‘I sure will. You take care, Gwyneth.’

We held each other’s gaze for a few moments then I got into the car. I paused a moment, taking a few deep breaths in the safety of the car’s darkness. My hands were trembling slightly, my heart pounding. There was a voice inside me screaming Stay! Stay! Stay! but I’d promised myself a long time ago I’d carry on moving, not stopping, no people to tie me down, to disappoint me, to have me disappoint them. Only Reg had got through that. And now this man, this bearded giant who made me feel as warm as the whisky he drank. What was wrong with me? I barely knew him.

I quickly turned the key in the ignition before I changed my mind.

The car spluttered then died.

I turned the key again but, still, nothing.

‘You have to be kidding me,’ I hissed.

Dylan knocked on the car window and I unrolled it, ice cracking.

‘Won’t start?’ he asked.

‘Doesn’t look like it. I think it might be the fuel line, as it is turning over.’

‘You know your stuff.’

‘Don’t look so surprised! I have to when I’m in the middle of nowhere filming and a car is my only getaway.’ I grabbed the torch I always took with me when I travelled, got out of the car and opened the bonnet. I aimed the light at the fuel filter as Dylan stood next to me, leaning close to have a look too.

‘Looks like it is the fuel filter,’ he said, gesturing to the fuel seeping out of one of the pipes.

I sighed. ‘Yep. Not easily fixed. No flow, no go.’

‘Well, that’s decided. I’m not saying this place doesn’t make a great bedroom,’ Dylan said, gesturing to the backseat of the car. ‘God knows I’ve spent a few nights out here staring up at the stars, but I wouldn’t recommend it in the winter. And I’d offer to give you a lift but I’ve had a few drinks, as have the others.’

‘Taxi?’ I asked half-heartedly. Truth was, I wasn’t disappointed the car wouldn’t start. Something inside me was yearning to stay and anyway, my fate had been decided by a faulty fuel filter.

Dylan laughed. ‘On Christmas Eve? You have to be kidding.’

I stared up the road. There was a bell of excitement ringing inside, one I was trying to stifle. I could feel this might be the beginning of something, and, truth was, it scared me. Christmases reminded me of a time I had a family to celebrate with, a time before the fracture that opened up between my parents and me. But Dylan, Dylan with his gorgeous face and huge hands and that smile, beaming at me in that moment, tantalising, teasing …

‘Okay,’ I said in an exhale of breath. ‘If your family won’t mind?’

‘Won’t mind? It’ll make their Christmas. Come on.’

He hauled my overnight bag over his shoulder and I followed him back to the house, the twinkle of its golden lights and the sound of laughter within warming me up. When we stepped inside the house, Oscar was walking through the hallway with a tray of steaming mulled wine.

He paused, his face lighting up. ‘You changed your mind?’

‘Her car wouldn’t start,’ Dylan explained.

‘Ah, well then, it’s fate!’ Oscar declared, approaching me with the tray and gesturing for me to take a glass.

‘If it’s okay though,’ I quickly said. ‘I don’t want to impose. It is Christmas, after all.’

‘What did Mairi say about the candles in the window?’ Oscar said, gesturing towards the triangle of candles that flickered in the living-room window. ‘It’s Christmas, a time for welcoming guests into the house. It’s the McClusky clan way and frankly, we’ve been sorely missing being able to fulfil that tradition in recent years, this place is so remote. And now we have the most wonderful of guests, a beautiful documentary-maker. So come in, make yourself at home. Consider yourself an honorary McClusky.’

Dylan gave me an embarrassed smile at his dad’s speech. But as I took a quick sip of the delicious mulled wine, I felt a bit overcome at the generosity of Oscar’s words. There had been so many Christmas Days spent alone, or working, over the years. Sad memories too of that first Christmas in the hotel, yearning for my parents as I served Christmas lunch to guests, the feel of the delicate bracelet they’d sent me upon my wrist. ‘Christmas is a religious festival, Gwyneth,’ my aunt had barked when she’d noticed me crying. ‘Are you religious? No. So it’s just another day, another day to work and make money. The sooner you wrap your head around that, the better you’ll feel.’ So from that moment, I had wrapped my head around it. And I thought I was okay with it.

Until now.

I smiled up at the two men. ‘Thank you.’ Then I looked out at the loch, glistening beneath the moonlight. How strange to think nearly losing my life in that frozen lake had brought me here.




Chapter Six (#ulink_08b9815d-8754-548d-b526-a1f13eb8f5c9)

Amber

Winterton Chine

13 December 2009


‘A lake. A frozen lake!’

Amber wakes with a start. She opens her eyes, pulling herself from her slumped position on the chair. A shard of sunlight slices through the blinds. She follows it towards the girl, who’s sitting up in her hospital bed, eyes wide. She looks even younger, pale lashes against her cheeks, which are flushed from sleep. Amber feels her heart contract at the sight of her. She’s such a bloody softie, even when she tries not to be. A total sucker. That’s why she’d ended up staying with the girl all night in hospital, unable to bear the thought of her being here alone.

‘What’s this about a lake?’ Amber asks, rubbing her eyes.

‘It was dream I had, of a lake,’ the girl replies. Her eyes drift towards the window and the sea outside. ‘It was frozen. There – there was a house too. Made of wood. It was huge, with massive windows.’

Amber leans forward. ‘That’s good. Might be a memory. Anything else?’ The girl shakes her head and Amber pats her pale hand. ‘It’ll come.’

She stands up and stretches, the notepad that had been found with the girl slipping off her lap. She’d gone through it the night before, just as the hospital staff had, hoping to find some clues they might have missed. There was nothing of use though, just notes written about various wildlife by whoever owned it and some sketches too, delicate and detailed.

Amber leans down, picks the notepad up from the floor and lays it back on the table. She sniffs at her armpits. ‘I think I better go home for a shower.’

‘Don’t go yet,’ the girl says. She looks so lost, so scared.

‘Okay, as long as you can put up with my stinky pits,’ Amber replies.

‘You don’t smell.’

A trolley stops at the cubicle and a tired-looking porter peers in. ‘Breakfast, love.’

‘My head hurts,’ the girl says as the trolleys rolls in. ‘Can I have something for it?’

‘Don’t worry,’ the porter replies, ‘your painkillers are here.’

Amber helps the girl to sit up and pulls the makeshift table over the bed. The porter lays the breakfast on it: scrambled eggs, some streaky bacon and a sausage with a cup of tea and plastic tumbler of orange juice.

The girl wrinkles her nose at the smell, pushing the plate away. ‘Yuck. That meat smells awful.’

‘Smells fine to me. Maybe you’re a vegetarian?’

The girl nods. ‘Maybe I am!’

Amber turns to the porter. ‘Can we have a vegetarian breakfast, please?’

‘What about you?’ the girls asks Amber.

‘No food for visitors,’ the porter says. ‘There’s a café downstairs.’

‘She’s just spent the night looking after one of your patients,’ the girl says. ‘I think a coffee and a croissant or something is a small ask, right?’

Amber looks at the girl in surprise. She’s clearly a feisty one, whether she knows it or not.

‘This isn’t Starbucks,’ the porter retorts.

‘Fine, then just leave this breakfast here,’ the girl says, pushing the tray towards me. ‘You’ll only throw it away.’

The porter shakes his head in exasperation and walks away.

‘Now you’re going to tell me you’re a vegetarian too, aren’t you?’ the girl says.

Amber laughs. ‘No chance. That was impressive though.’ Amber picks a sausage up and bites into it.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How gutsy you just were. Though I think the blue streaks in your hair kind of give it away.’

The girl examines a blue strand of her hair. ‘Turns out I’m a rebellious pain in the butt, who knew?’

They both laugh.

‘Okay, how about we try to remember some stuff while we wait for your breakfast,’ Amber says. ‘Let’s focus on the lodge and the lake. Anything else? A road? Any landmarks?’

The girl thinks about it for a moment. ‘Do you have paper and a pen?’ she eventually asks.

Amber nods, digging a small notepad and pencil out of her bag. She doesn’t use it much. It’s a struggle to write. She was clearly meant to be left-handed.

The girl takes the pencil and stares at it. Then she suddenly bends her head over the pad, her blonde and blue hair trailing over the paper as she starts sketching. Over the next few minutes, Amber watches, amazed, as the girl draws the most beautiful sketch of a vast lodge overlooking a glistening lake. It wasn’t a classical type of drawing. It had a Manga feel to it.

The girl looks up when she’s finished. ‘I think I can draw.’

‘You bloody well can,’ Amber says with a laugh. ‘Let’s have a proper look. Is this the lodge you dreamt of?’

The girl nods as she hands the drawing over and Amber examines it. The lodge is made from wood with large windows that reflect the icy lake before it. A veranda leads out into it and behind the lodge are snow-topped mountains and hints of a forest. A bird glides over the lake, its wings wide and feathery.

‘I don’t remember the details,’ the girl remarks. ‘I improvised a few bits. I remember the bird in my dream though.’

‘There was a drawing of a bird like this in the notepad,’ Amber says, opening the notepad at the right page. ‘A ptarmigan.’

The girl looks over her shoulder at the page. ‘Oh, yes.’ She seems disappointed. ‘The dream probably means nothing then. I must’ve copied the bird from this notepad.’

‘Don’t discount it straight away. It’s no coincidence you have this notepad. Your dream, and this drawing, may well be based on reality. Your reality.’

‘Do you think the drawing could help then?’ the girl asks, looking hopeful.

‘Well, there are a lot of lodges overlooking lakes in the country, but who knows? This is certainly better than nothing. I’ll take a photo,’ Amber says, getting her phone out and taking a quick snap of the drawing before handing it back to the girl. ‘I can then take it home with me and do some searching on the net.’

‘Vegetarian breakfast,’ a bored voice calls out. The porter appears, lays the new breakfast – a sorry-looking Quorn sausage – on the table and slams down a coffee, some of it spilling over the sides. ‘Coffee for you too.’ Then he walks off.

Amber bursts out laughing, expecting the girl to laugh too but instead she’s staring at her drawing, a furrow in her brow.

‘What’s wrong?’ Amber ask her.

The girl looks up, eyes filled with tears. ‘Something bad happened there. Something … really bad. I just felt it as I was looking at the photo. But I can’t grasp what happened,’ she adds in frustration.

A shiver runs down Amber’s back. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ she says, trying to reassure the girl. ‘Probably just this whole situation making you think like that.’

The girl nods but doesn’t look convinced. As Amber watches her half-heartedly dig her fork into the sausage, she makes a promise to herself: she’ll do everything she can to get this girl safely home.

Half an hour later, Amber is walking towards her flat. She’s promised the girl she’d be back in time for the police visit. She’d leave the shop closed today. It wasn’t like anything would be sold anyway and the painting would just need to be delayed a few hours. As she goes to put her key in the door, her phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out and sees it’s her mum.

‘Hi, Mum,’ she says as she puts it to her ear, hovering it between her neck and shoulder as she lets herself into the main part of the block of flats she lives in. It’s a three-storey building enclosing a pretty garden. There’s a nice feel there, close enough to the sea to hear it, but far enough from town to avoid the noise from the late-night pubs. Amber had moved in three months after she and Jasper had split up, and that was ten years ago now. He’d insisted she stay in the house they’d shared together, but she hadn’t been able to face it. Without Katy, it was just a black hole of grief and painful memories. The flat meant a clean start, a complete contrast to the busy, bright family home they’d had. Walls painted white, a white kitchen, minimal furniture.

‘I tried calling you,’ Rita says. ‘You haven’t picked up!’

‘I’ve been at the hospital.’

‘With the girl?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘She’s been at the hospital, Viv,’ Rita calls out. ‘With the girl!’

‘Wonderful!’ Amber hears her aunt declare in the background.

Amber rolls her eyes as she jogs up the stairs.

‘How is she?’ Rita asks.

‘Getting there. The police are visiting today.’

‘Will you stay with her for that? She’ll be terrified, the poor thing.’

‘What’s happened?’ Amber hears Viv ask in the background.

‘Just the police visiting, Viv,’ Rita replies.

‘Just put me on speakerphone, will you, Mum?’ Amber says, frustrated as she lets herself into her flat. ‘We might get through this conversation by the end of the day that way.’

There’s the sound of buttons being pressed.

‘Hello, Amber, love, it’s your aunt Viv.’ Her aunt is talking in a loud and slow voice.

‘Really? I had no idea,’ Amber says as she walks to her bedroom and kicks her shoes off.

‘Honestly, your girl and her sarcasm,’ Viv tuts. ‘So, what’s happening then?’

‘I’m just having a shower then going back to the hospital,’ Amber says.

‘Do you want us to bring anything?’ Rita asks.

‘Ergh, no, I don’t think you two barging around the hospital will do her any good,’ Amber says.

‘We found her too!’ Viv declares.

‘Honestly, Viv, she’s not a prize,’ Rita says.

The two women start arguing and Amber blocks it out as she pulls a towel from the immersion cupboard. ‘Finished now?’ she asks her mum and aunt. They both grow silent. ‘Good. There is a favour you can do for me, actually. Can you go to the shop and stick a notice on the front? Something like Closed for the day.’

‘You never close it,’ her mum says in surprise.

‘And what about the painting?’ Viv chimes in. ‘One of the huts is half-red!’

‘It’ll just have to wait,’ Amber replies. ‘Hopefully the girl’s family will come for her soon, especially with the police getting involved.’

‘Don’t wear yourself out,’ Rita says.

‘Yes, make sure you come home to sleep tonight,’ Viv adds.

‘And eat,’ Rita insists. ‘In fact, why don’t you come over for dinner?’

Amber starts undressing and walks into her bathroom. ‘I’ll see,’ she shouts through to the bedroom. She hears the two sisters whispering. ‘What are you two whispering about?’ she asks.

‘Have you seen Jasper at the hospital?’ Rita asks quietly.

Amber pauses. ‘He does work there, so yes.’

‘And …?’ Viv asks.

‘And what?’ Amber asks, trying to make her tone flat.

‘Well …’ her mum replies. Amber knows what she’s desperate to ask: Did they talk? Was there a connection? Will they get remarried? Her mum and aunt adored Jasper and were devastated when they divorced. It was only recently they seemed to give up hope of them ever getting back together. A small thing like this could bring all that misguided hope back.

‘He just passed by, we said hi,’ Amber lies. ‘Look, I need to go now. Phones don’t work well in showers. I’ll call you later.’

‘Okay, love,’ Rita says. ‘You take care, all right?’

‘Will do.’ Amber hangs up then stands quiet for a few moments. She catches sight of her naked body in the mirror. The curve of her plump tummy. The sag of her heavy breasts. She smoothes her fingers over her thighs, feeling the cellulite. Then her fingers creep up to find the scar from her c-section. Her eyes glisten with tears and she thinks of the way Jasper had looked at her in the lift. ‘Oh, Jasper,’ she whispers to herself.

An hour later, she’s back at the hospital. The girl is sitting up in bed, staring out of the window. Her eyes light up when she sees Amber.

‘I brought some stuff,’ Amber says, laying a large shopping bag on the chair. ‘First this,’ she says, pulling an A4 plain paper pad out with a pencil set.

The girl smiles. ‘Thank you.’

‘And after your wonderful experience at breakfast, I thought you might fancy a break from hospital food. Plus,’ she says as she unpacks the food items she bought on the way, ‘I thought we could turn it into a bit of a memory game. I read once that taste can trigger memories.’

The girl’s face lights up even more as she takes in the large chocolate bar laid on her table. ‘I like this idea.’

‘Me too, mainly because it means I get to join in,’ Amber says with a wink. ‘Let’s start with this,’ she says, holding up a jar of Marmite.

‘Marmite,’ the girl says. ‘I think I know this.’

‘But do you like it? That is the question.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Amber says, opening the jar and handing the girl a spoon. ‘I find whether someone like or dislikes Marmite is a good personality barometer.’ The girl takes the spoon, scoops a small amount out and tentatively brings it to her mouth. She pulls a face as she tastes it. ‘Disgusting.’

‘Yes, I knew it! It’s foul, isn’t it? My aunt loves it and used to force-feed it to me as a child in the hope I’d change my mind. I think it’s the devil’s food … so let’s save it for the porter.’

The girl giggles.

‘Right, chocolate next,’ Amber says, pointing to the chocolate bar.

‘I have to like this. I kind of know I do,’ the girl says as she unwraps it.

‘Who doesn’t?’

The girl breaks it in half and offers Amber the other half. Amber takes it, smiling as they both take bites, saying ‘Mmmmm’ at the same time. Over the next ten minutes, they try different foods from salt and vinegar crisps – a yes from the girl – to liquorice – a determined no.

‘As it’s nearly Christmas,’ Amber says, ‘I thought we’d try some of this too.’

She reaches into her bag for the item she’d been saving for last, a large gingerbread man. She remembers buying one for Katy the Christmas before she passed away. They’d walked around the annual fair hand-in-hand, cheeks rosy from the cold, as Katy nibbled on it. Amber had seen one as she’d been walking to the hospital earlier and knew she had to get it for the girl.

The girl turns it over in her hands, brow furrowed as she examines it. ‘I think I’ve had one of these before.’ She places it against her chest and closes her eyes. ‘Yes, I had one around my neck once, bigger than this. There was a red ribbon through it and I could lift it to my mouth whenever I fancied a bite.’ She opens the cellophane wrapping, deep in her memories as she lifts the biscuit to her mouth. She bites into it and gently chews.

Then her eyes suddenly dart open and she throws the biscuit away.

‘What’s wrong?’ Amber asks.

‘Something bad happened when I had this,’ the girls says in a trembling voice. ‘It happened at the lodge,’ she continues, words stumbling over one another. ‘A man with dark hair, a beard. I’m crying and … and I’m so scared.’ Her breathing grows heavier, her fingers clutching her covers. Amber sits close to her, putting her arm around the girl’s trembling shoulders. ‘We’re reaching out to each other and someone’s screaming,’ the girl continues. ‘And he’s saying, “Lumin, Lumin”.’ The girl looks at Amber with wide eyes. ‘Is that my name, Lumin?’

‘Sounds like it is,’ Amber whispers. She pulls the girl close as she begins to cry.

‘What’s happening in here?’ Amber looks up to see the nurse Jasper knows at the cubicle curtains.

‘She’s just remembering things,’ Amber says as she strokes the girl’s hair. ‘We think her name might be Lumin. It’s an unusual name, so it might help us find out who she is …’

‘What’s all this?’ the nurse asks, surveying all the food Amber brought in.

‘I was trying to help her remember,’ Amber says. ‘And the food’s not exactly great here for a vegetarian,’ she adds.

The nurse picks up the packet of cashew nuts. ‘Are you crazy? How do we know the girl isn’t allergic to nuts?’

‘She isn’t! She’s fine. And can we stop calling her girl now her name might be Lumin?’

‘Might be,’ the nurse says. ‘You can not bring in food like this in. We know nothing about Lumin nor her allergies. It’s too much of a risk.’

Lumin wipes her tears away. ‘Amber’s only trying to help.’

‘Well, it’s not her job. It’s mine,’ the nurse says, crossing her arms.

Amber and the nurse hold each other’s gaze for a moment before the nurse breaks it. ‘Anyway, the police are here. You need to go, Miss Caulfield,’ she says, seeming to take pleasure in using Amber’s maiden name. ‘We can take over from here.’

‘I don’t want her to go,’ Lumin says, grasping at Amber’s hand.

‘I’ll just go to the café,’ Amber says to her. ‘I’ll be up as soon as the interview is over. It will be fine,’ she adds, forcing a smile. ‘The police know how to deal with things like this. I bet you remember even more things after you talk to them.’ Amber squeezes her hand then walks out, the nurse giving her daggers as she leaves. What is her problem?

As Amber walks through the ward, a smartly dressed man and woman approach her.

‘Amber Caulfield?’ the man asks.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Detective King and this is Detective Matthews. We’re investigating the girl you found on the beach. Any chance of grabbing a word after we’ve spoken to her?’

‘Of course. I’ll wait in the café downstairs.’

‘Perfect. See you there.’

Amber watches them walk towards Lumin’s cubicle and catches a glimpse of Lumin’s fearful eyes as they part the curtains. Amber wishes she could stay in there with her. But then feels foolish for even thinking it. What right does she have? She’s not her mother.

I’m not anyone’s mother, she thinks.

She walks down to the café feeling sullen, mumbles her order and carries her coffee back to a small table.

‘Hello again.’ She looks up to see Jasper smiling down at her, his rucksack over his shoulder … the same rucksack he used for work when they were married. ‘You’re becoming a bit of a regular visitor to the hospital. How’s the girl?’

‘Lumin. She’s fine.’

His face lights up. ‘She remembered her name?’

Amber nods. ‘I did a sort of memory thing with her. Brought in lots of different foods to see if they might act as a trigger.’

Jasper laughs. ‘God, you’re clever.’

‘Your nurse friend didn’t seem to think so. She had a right go at me.’

‘Mind if I join you?’ he asks, ignoring her reference to the nurse. ‘I just finished my shift and need a coffee.’

Amber shrugs. ‘Sure.’

He shoves his rucksack on the floor. ‘Another coffee?’ he asks. ‘Or how about a cinnamon muffin? I remember how much you liked those.’

‘No, thanks, already had breakfast courtesy of the NHS.’

He smiles to himself. ‘You’re lucky, visitors aren’t usually allowed.’

‘It was leftover. Lumin is a vegetarian so I got to eat the sausage.’

‘Another thing you’ve found out. You’d make a good detective.’

Amber watches him as he goes to the counter, all tall and gangly and handsome. He hasn’t changed. She wonders if she has. What does he see when he looks at her? A slightly more overweight, more cynical, more tired version of the woman he fell in love with?

He comes back with his coffee and sits down.

‘When are the police visiting?’ he asks.

‘Now,’ Amber replies.

‘That’s why you’re biting your nails like crazy,’ he says, gesturing towards her fingertips.

She nods, tucking her right hand under her armpits.

‘She’ll be fine,’ he says.

‘I know. She was just a little bit distressed before they turned up.’

Amber tells him about the memory Lumin had and his brow furrows. ‘Maybe she’s a runaway,’ he says. ‘That would explain why nobody knows her here.’

‘Maybe.’ Amber puts her hand to her mouth again, chewing at her nails.

‘She’s really got to you, hasn’t she?’

Amber looks up at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you care for her. It’s good.’ He pauses a moment, looking down into his coffee. Then he looks back up at Amber with sad eyes. ‘Maybe you’re projecting Katy onto her. She would have been fifteen this year.’

Amber feels herself tense. Why was he always so bloody blunt? ‘No, I’m not!’

He reaches across, placing his hand on hers. ‘There’s nothing wrong with admitting it, Amber. Nothing wrong with remembering. I know it still hurts, but it’s been ten years.’

Amber moves her hand out from under his. ‘This has nothing to do with Katy.’

‘Really? I worry about you. I worry you still keep it all wound up inside.’

She laughs. ‘Do you realise how patronising you sound? I’m doing perfectly well, thanks.’

‘So you feel you’ve moved on, do you?’

Her mouth drops open. ‘Moved on? From the death of my child? Is that even possible? Anyway,’ she adds, gesturing around her and making an effort to lower her voice, ‘do explain to me how you’ve moved on. You’re still working all the hours God sends at this place. You even still have that same old rucksack,’ she adds, pointing to his bag.

‘Sure, some things remain the same,’ he says calmly. ‘But I’ve moved away. I even went travelling for a few weeks last year. Have you been anywhere?’

‘Travelling, hey?’ Amber says. ‘Wouldn’t happen to be with the busty nurse from the children’s ward, would it? If that’s your idea of moving on then fine, I really don’t care,’ she says, leaning back and folding her arms. ‘I’ve had my fair share of dates.’

Jasper pinches his lips together. ‘Nothing’s going on with Jen.’ He meets her gaze. ‘Truth is, I never quite got over you. Kinda puts women off, hankering after your ex.’

Amber feels her cheeks flush, all the old feelings rushing back. ‘Don’t say that.’

Jasper opens his mouth to say something else but a shadow falls across them. They both look up to see Detective King standing over them, slightly out of breath. ‘Can you come up, Miss Caulfield? Lumin’s a bit …’ He pauses. ‘She’s a bit distressed and said she won’t calm down until she sees you.’

Amber quickly stands and Jasper grabs her arm. ‘She’s not Katy,’ he says softly.

‘I know,’ Amber hisses. ‘Jesus.’ She shrugs his hand off then follows the officer to the lift.

Lumin is sitting scrunched up in the corner of her bed, her head to her knees. Magazines are scattered on the floor and a cup of tea has been overturned, the brown liquid spilling over the side table. Lumin’s bed covers are thrown to the side and Amber can see her bare feet, the remnants of blue nail varnish on her toes. It strikes Amber that she hadn’t noticed that before. It reveals a life before this – a carefree life that had Lumin painting her nails with a smile on her face.





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