The Trouble With Love (Yorkshire Romances #3)

Chapter Twenty

Aiden was waiting when I eventually reached home. He was sitting, perched with one buttock on the sofa arm, and he looked nervous. The washing machine was going and the handcuffs were lying on the table, as though he had dissociated himself from any bedroom goings-on.

‘Holly . . .’

‘Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry about having to send a total stranger to let you out but . . . I didn’t know when I’d get back.’

‘No, it’s okay. It’s me who’s sorry.’ He shifted about a bit. He was wearing ordinary clothes, I noticed, not his usual ‘strip me, whip me’ gear but a plain white shirt and slightly baggy jeans. ‘This is never gonna work, babe.’

Then I saw his holdall, packed at his feet. ‘What isn’t?’ And for the world I couldn’t tell you if my heart lifted or sank. ‘Aid?’

‘It’s weird, like something kinda shifted, almost like I was in some dream or something, y’know? When you went, and I was here, waiting, all stoked and ready for action and then . . .’ he shook his head, almost dazed. ‘I fell asleep for a couple of hours and when I woke up my head just cleared, and I thought, “what the fuck am I doing here?”’

Right at the time I was with Kai. Realising that maybe, just maybe he and I might be more to one another than either of us had expected . . .

‘ I realise now that I can’t stay here with you, I need to be free to take whatever work interests me — being based with you would be restrictive, tie down my creativity.’ And he picked up the bag. ‘Sorry, babe. If you’re ever up my way, come and see me, but I’m afraid’ — he stood up, swung the bag casually up onto his shoulder — ‘a permanent relationship is not what I’m after.’ A quick kiss grazed my cheek and, with the air of a man newly released from prison, he sauntered out onto the chilly pavement.

I closed the door behind him and started to giggle, although a lot of the laughter was a bit shocked. Wow. It felt as though I’d gone through all the stages of a relationship and its breakdown in a kind of time-lapse photography way. And then I stopped laughing. Wasn’t that how it always went for me? And a tiny chill crept up my spine and whispered into my ear that all this had happened since we’d done the spell, Aiden being overcome with desire for me, a desire which had vanished as fast as it arose when I realised that Kai was . . . was . . .

Was the man I wanted.

I opened all the windows, despite the chilly air, trying to get the breeze to drive all traces of Aiden out of the house. The living room still smelled of Chinese takeaway and burned-down candles, there was a foil dish smooshed into a flying-saucer shape and dumped on top of the TV and a forgotten single sock behind the sofa. I dropped it all into the kitchen bin, fetched clean laundry from the cupboard in the hall — Aiden had put all the bedding on a hot wash cycle — and remade the bed. The place felt like mine again. Quiet, yes, after the frantic activities of today, no tiny babies crying, no heavy footsteps thumping up and down the stairs, no shouts for tea from the kitchen. But mine. The way I liked it. Silent. Empty.

Lonely .

I did some work on my laptop for a while. The local weather had put anyone off wanting any location work from me lately, so I just had paperwork to catch up on and a company in Bath wanting a large ‘typically Northern’ house for some grim drama they were casting. I found myself staring at the screen without registering the words I’d typed on it. Seeing, behind the Word document, a kind of glowing after-image of Kai’s face, that yellow-eyed focussed intensity that he’d had when he’d asked me to stay. The serious, slow way he looked at me, as though he was waiting for me to come to some realisation, his questions and observations about my life and friendships . . . About Nick.

What did he see when he looked at Nick and I? Devoted sister, caring for her brother? Or something else, something darker — something I wouldn’t even let myself think, except sometimes, when it snuck through and had to be excised from my brain like a bad idea?

I could see my own face now, words shining through my cheeks and eyes and highlighting my skin. Was he right? Did he know how I really felt, underneath it all? Why I kept everyone at arms’ length? Not because I couldn’t make room for them in my heart, but because I was afraid that they would see through my caring and into the guilt that lay inside, that they might ask the question I was terrified even to think to myself — why, exactly, did I do it?

I stared out of the window as my mind cantered round and round the realisations. Outside, in the late dark, the snow had turned to rain and the thaw was in progress, accompanied by the meltwater drip from gutters and the slushy swish of tyres on the road.

There was a tap on my front door. ‘Holly?’

I hesitated for a second as my thoughts overlapped with reality, but then realised that I couldn’t make my brother suffer for my introspection. ‘Hi Nicky.’ I let him in. ‘You don’t often get all the way down here.’ Nicholas’s flat was at the top of town in a dingy area where they didn’t mind his rent money being provided by the Benefits agency.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’ He looked around. ‘And have you got any food?’

‘Dual-purpose visit then.’ I ransacked the freezer and put two pizzas in the oven. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

‘They were right, you know.’

‘Who were? Not the voices again, I’ve told you, voices in your head very rarely have good ideas.’

‘Cerys and Kai. They were right about me getting dependent on you, not looking after myself because I knew you’d sort me out.’

‘Okay.’ I said slowly. To give my hands something to do, I laid the table.

‘So I’ve decided to leave.’

I stopped, one hand still holding forks. ‘You’ve what ? Where would you go?’ And then the horrible, sick-making spurt of relief, quickly covered by the plaster of despair, and if you go, what do I have left?

‘Look, Holl. I hate my life.’ Nick leaned over the back of the sofa, it made him look like a fey male model. ‘I’ve pretty well resigned myself to never being able to get a proper job round here. I can’t get away from myself, I’ll always be Mrs Grey’s difficult son, the one with the problems. If I go somewhere else I can start again.’

‘But, I repeat, where would you go?’

‘Peterborough.’

‘ Peter . . .’ My voice was all squeaky. ‘What, you mean with Cerys?’

‘Yeah. We’ve been talking. On Facebook. She’s got a three-bedroomed flat, she needs a bit of help with the twins, she said I could stay with her in exchange for a bit of mother’s helping and doing housework and stuff like that. Maybe get a proper job eventually.’

‘But . . .’ I waved a fork weakly, ‘your meds?’

‘They have pharmacies in Peterborough. Doctors too. But, like you said, these new meds seem to be working out for me. I know I . . . up in Scotland things got a bit strange, but I didn’t take my stuff then.’

‘I’m just amazed that, as the new mother of twins, Cerys has had the time for all this chatting and hanging around on social media,’ I said, to distract him from another monologue on how, sometimes, he got the feeling that his drugs did nothing more than paralyse him and blunt his feelings. I’d sat through that explanation more times than I cared to remember.

‘Think Kai had the babies. He’s been staring at them a lot, she says. But, listen Holl. Things Cerys said make sense. About sometimes everyone needing a bit of help and nothing to be ashamed about and all that. And that all made me realise . . . I used to think that the meds evened me out too much, took off my edge, but now I know they make life easier for me. I like myself more when I’m on them. I won’t not take them again, Holl, I promise.’

‘Oh.’ It was all I could say. I could smell burning cheese.

‘So, Kai’s driving us down in a few days, when Cerys has got used to the twins. Thought I’d better tell you.’

‘Are you and Cerys . . . ?’

Nick grinned a wicked grin. It was such a ‘guy’ grin I had to smile back. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him do that before. ‘You’ve got a mucky mind, Holly Grey. Cerys and I are just mates. Friends.’ He shot me a furtive look. ‘Like you and Kai. No sex please, we’re too busy being busy.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Aw, come on. You stand a much better chance with Kai if I’m not around. I know he’s not a wanker, he’s a nice bloke, and . . . you can give him your full attention when you’re not worrying about me.’

‘And you think I won’t worry about you in Peterborough? It’s not the Other Side, Nicky, it’s only a hundred miles or so away.’

‘Yeah. Are we eating now? Those pizzas smell funny.’

I’d bent down to the oven when a thought struck me. ‘Oh my God. Nick.’

‘I told you they smelled funny.’

‘No. I . . . you and Cerys. Remember your wish? The one that I had to make for you when we did the spell?’

‘Think so, yes.’

‘You wanted a girlfriend. With enormous tits.’ We stared at one another, then started to laugh. ‘Well feeding twins is better than implants. And she’s a friend who happens to be a girl.’

‘I got my wish. And what about you, what did you wish for?’

‘I don’t even want to think about it right now.’ I plonked the pizzas onto the table.

‘Kai really likes you.’ Ignoring the cutlery, Nick picked up his slice of pizza in his fingers. ‘I’ve heard him talking to Cerys about you. Like he was really fond of you. And you like him, don’t you? Your eyes go all big when you look at him. And you stare at his groin a lot.’

‘He’s about nine foot tall, his groin is the only bit I can see without binoculars.’ I tore a massive bit of pizza off to cover my embarrassed confusion.

‘I’m going to miss you.’

And I’m looking into a big blank space where you’ve been for all those years. ‘Yeah, well I’ll miss you too.’

‘No you won’t. You’ll be able to have a proper life, not always have to be looking after me. Like Cerys said, I’m thirty-two, you shouldn’t have to be looking after me, I can look after myself.’

‘No you can’t. Look at that time with the pigeons.’

‘No, I can. I should. I’ve done too much leaning, too much letting you cope when I should have been trying to manage everything myself. I know I’m not normal, that my mind doesn’t work the same way as other people and that I have to be careful and take the meds and not get overtired . . . but I still screw up, Holl, because I know you’ll pick up the pieces. If I go to Peterborough — well, I can’t lean on Cerys, she’s got her hands full, she will need me . I think that’s what I need most, Holl, to be useful rather than just the weird tit who talks to walls.’

He was right. Of course he was. It was just that . . . I’d spent the last twenty years looking after Nick. I wasn’t sure I knew how to stop.

We finished the pizza and he went back to his flat to start packing up his things. Since his things consisted of a duvet and pillow, two cardboard boxes of clothes and a stuffed badger that he’d found on a skip and refused to be apart from, I hardly thought it would take the next few days but, hey. I’d stopped interfering. And I couldn’t believe, really and truly that it could be that simple. That he could just decide to go, pack up, and leave, this man who’d needed me to remind him to change his underwear and brush his teeth until he was twenty-five.

I slept long and deeply, uninterrupted by a self-absorbed film director with a permanent erection. So many women, I mused, waking up next morning refreshed and unsticky, would have killed for a man like Aiden. I would have ended up killing Aiden.

I got dressed and got in the hire car that I was going to use while my car sat in the garage and got poked. A lot of men in boiler suits had sucked their teeth at it already, and come to what I was going to call an overall consensus that the axle was snapped. The hire car was smaller than my Renault but newer and didn’t have crisp packets all over the floor. I drove it across to Barndale on the squishily slushed-over roads, while the rain continued to wash at the edges of the snow, eroding it back gradually into lumps that looked like half-sucked sweets, discarded along the margins, and the banks of ploughed snow wore down to weirdly topiarised shapes, sculpted by the running water.

I struggled and waded up the hill like a simple, if somewhat masochistic, early morning sightseer. It was, after all, a lovely day. The dawn sky was Renaissance blue in the gaps between the rain clouds and apart from the fact that the ground was covered in a layer of rapidly liquidising snow, it could have been summer. Only cold, of course. Leaves, curled like ammonites, blew across the hilltop, somewhere a dog barked and a sheep coughed. Rooks cleared their throats overhead, their finger-wings combing the sky and the air was as clear as a mirror.

Hands in pockets, I sauntered to the bare hilltop. The snow still lay thickly up here, and footprints and tyre prints were translucent trails nibbled into it, showing where someone had been creeping around since we’d been up here performing psychological warfare on our sanity. The site of our ritual was bare, though, just a blank, white sheet of virgin snow which had blown around, so the surface was only inches deep, but drifts sulked around the trees like onlookers driven back from a juicy accident. Trying to look innocent and just-out-for-a-walk, I began to stomp and rake through the snow with my boots, stirring the smooth surface into a battlefield of tread marks and kicked-up piles.

The first candle turned up surprisingly easily. With an almost invisibly fast glance around to make sure no one was spying, I bent down and dug it out of its snow hole. It froze onto my skin, hard and oily like a dead man’s finger and I shoved it quickly into my pocket with a shiver. One down, three to go.

I kicked snow innocently for a bit, getting more vicious as I became more frustrated. Eventually I was sending torrents of snow from each boot cascading up over my head and I nearly sprained my ankle twice from kicking unexpected small rocks. I must have looked like the video-nasty version of Walking in a Winter Wonderland as I brutally belted another footfull of snow which fell in a frozen shower onto my head and shoulders. ‘Bloody bloody things, where are you?’ I muttered.

‘They’re here.’ A voice from near the treeline made me jump. ‘If it’s these that you’re looking for.’

Leaning against a tree and swinging the three remaining candles from one hand, stood a man. Something about his voice and arrogant stance were familiar.

‘Can I have them, please?’ I moved towards him, down off the shoulder of the hill and towards the wood, holding out my hand. ‘They belong to a friend.’

‘I know.’ The man came properly into view. He was quite attractive, trendily long-haired and nicely shaped under an unimpressive grey duffel coat. ‘The witch.’

Then I recognised him, but of course by then it was too late to back up. Of course, he would have known we’d come back for the evidence . . . He must have taken the candles almost as soon as we’d gone off the hill, and the snow had covered his tracks. ‘You’re the guy with the gun from the other day.’

An acquiescent tip of the head. ‘Which, I think you’ll notice, I never fired.’ His accent wasn’t local, more southern. Well-spoken but without the braying edge of the Ginge.

‘Bully for you.’ My teeth were clenched so I’m not sure he heard me, which was probably just as well. ‘Can I have my candles now, please?’

‘No.’ Now the voice did have an edge. I think it might have been menace, but I’d never really been menaced before, so I wasn’t sure. It could, of course, have been outright rudeness.

‘But they’re mine.’

‘Now, let me see. If I give you the candles, you’ll . . . hmm . . . what would I do? Well, I’d probably go round and blow the living hell out of anyone who’d got in my way, but then you’re not me, are you? No, I think, if I held these’ — he swung the candles again — ‘and if I were a woman, convinced of my utter rightness and permission to behave as I wanted, I would go to the police. Tell them that some nasty men scared me.’ He put on a stupid, simpering voice for the last bit. ‘And there was me and my black girlfriend, out for an innocent stroll. Am I getting warm?’ He raised his eyebrows and I fought my face not to let it react. ‘And then the plods would be stomping around, asking stupid questions, getting no closer to the real truth of the matter which is,’ he lowered his voice and now the menace was unmistakable, even to me, ‘that some bitches were playing with Satan on the hill. Dancing with the Devil. Conjuring evil spirits with the use of blood and offerings.’

‘That’s bollocks!’

‘No. That’s women for you. All tits and lies.’ He moved away from the tree, towards me. I didn’t know what to do, I was on the rising ground of the slope so he had to move uphill to get to me, but I didn’t think I could move fast enough to get away on the snow-packed ground. He was wearing big tyre-treaded boots and I’d only got wellies on. Leopard print ones. ‘And you did do witchcraft.’

‘It’s not witchcraft. It’s a bunch of women playing. Pretending.’ Despite myself I took half a step back.

‘So you didn’t do spells then?’

‘No!’

‘Drinking the liquid from the cauldron? What was that, just having a nice brew up were you?’

‘Yes,’ I seized on this. ‘It was tea. We came out for a picnic.’

‘In November? In the dark?’ He pretended to shake a leg. ‘Jingle jingle, my darling. Try again. Because I’ve got pictures, love, photos of the candles with the blood and everything, and pictures of you sweet little girlies sitting there doing your thing with them.’

Now my palms had started to sweat and I could feel my heart rising up in my throat. ‘It’s a free country,’ I started again, but he made a quick jump across the snow and grabbed my arm so suddenly that I couldn’t speak any more.

‘No, it’s not a free country. At least, this part here is our country, and it most certainly is not free for lesbian sluts to writhe around in, copulating with the forces of Hell.’

I almost laughed then, at the overblown ridiculousness of his hatred. Vivienne and copulating with the forces of Hell were not compatible images. But his hand was hard on my arm, I could feel each individual finger even through my multitude of sweaters and my good coat. ‘What if we promise not to do it again?’ I asked, my voice smaller than I liked.

‘Yeah, ’cause you can always take the word of Satan’s whores.’ He began to walk now, dragging me backwards across the hard packed snow.

‘What are you doing? I’m not going anywhere with you!’ I skittered and wheeled alongside him, struggling for purchase but my boots had only nylon soles and slid unprotestingly across the wet surface. ‘You can’t do this.’

He inclined his head downwards. ‘Think I can, darling.’ He nodded again. ‘This gives me permission to do pretty much whatever I want right now,’ and I saw the metal sheen and grip of a hand gun, jutting from his pocket like a lethal erection.

‘What . . . where are you taking me?’ I tried to dig my heels in but my feet just slipped out from underneath me and his crocodile-jawed grip got tighter on my arm as he used it to hold me up.

‘Putting you somewhere. Somewhere you’ll be safe until I come back for you.’ Now he stopped walking but kept pulling until I was dragged right up against him. ‘I’ve got uses for you yet.’ His spare hand came into view, gun casually between his fingers as though it was nothing more than an accessory. He ran his thumb over the barrel like you might stroke the palm of a sinisterly familiar hand.

I started to struggle, yanking back against his hold on my arm. I could smell his body, his hair, an age-old cigarette on his breath. I tried not to notice, not to feel the threat of the swelling in his groin or the insolently possessive way he put the gun barrel under my jaw and tipped my face up to force me to look him in the eye. I couldn’t breathe now past the terror tightening my airways as he forced my body to turn slowly in front of him and squealed as I felt the gun drop, his hand move across my body, dipping and diving, until he increased his grip with a jerk that almost broke my arm. ‘Shut up. I’m just looking for . . . ah, there we are.’ My mobile appeared from my pocket for a second and then vanished into the depths of his clothing.

‘You can’t do this!’

‘Yeah? You think?’ His tongue became visible, poking from the corner of his mouth like a little hard-nosed rodent. My fear seemed to be exciting him or at least fuelling some twisted fantasy. ‘Because I think you need to learn some manners, girlie. Need to learn your place .’

My heart rose and rose until I thought it was going to come out through my ears and I could taste the bitter swell of adrenaline on my tongue. ‘And where would that be, exactly?’ It barely came out, a mere whisper, but I said it and then felt proud, even though my tongue had clacked with dryness over my teeth as I had.

He pushed his face against mine, so close that I could see the chip in his front tooth and my nose pricked with the rancid scent of wet wool from his coat. ‘Underneath me, darling, that’s where.’ And then he laughed, a harsh spit-spraying laugh that sent flecks of phlegm onto my cheek and he dragged me forward again, tightening his grip on my arm again until my fingers went numb.

Eventually we stopped in front of a small wooden hut, the kind the farmers use to keep their pheasant feed in and my abductor took a key from his pocket. ‘We’ll be nice and quiet in here,’ he said, as though showing me to a hotel room. ‘No one ever comes out here, except Michael, and I was wondering what to get him for Christmas.’ He swung round suddenly and touched my face. ‘Might be the first year he gets an un wrapped present.’

Even my skin backed up at the feel of his finger on my cheek. It crept tighter to my bones while I swallowed a sudden flood of saliva and tried to keep myself from vomiting.

The padlock opened and the door swung inwards. ‘But then, wouldn’t want you freezing to death before Mike gets a go at you. He likes his girls warm and lively; now me, I’m not so fussy. In you go.’ A shove and I overbalanced, toppling into the little hut and banging my knees on the ground. The man was right behind me, a silhouette of evil in the doorway, blocking the light, my air, my escape, his elbows angled oddly until I realised what he was doing — flipping his coat aside to get access to his zip.

I screamed, just once, a weirdly throaty noise as though it came from a nightmare, heeling myself backwards on the muddy floor until I was tight up against the far wall, splinters rasping at my neck. My fists clenched and I worked my back up the timber as I fought my shaking legs to let me stand, let me fight, while my brain begged me to lie down, play dead, stay still, and breathing and gagging had become the same thing.

Into the rough quiet a two-tone tune exploded like a gunshot in a mausoleum and the man swore then began fumbling his coat back into place, grabbing through the pockets until he came up with a phone. ‘Shit. What do you want?’ A squawkback of answer. ‘Yeah. I guess. Okay, I’m on my way.’ Two seconds later I was alone, the man gone without a word to me, the door was relocked and I was left perched awkwardly on the muddy floorspace, bile souring my tongue and my breath broken in my throat. I looked around. There was no window, the only light in the hut came from under the door in a narrow slice and the air smelled of birds and plastic.

After a few frozen seconds I gave in to tears. Pathetic, I know, but it seemed appropriate and gave my body time to get over the shaky, shocked feeling. Then, after a moment’s consideration — I didn’t want to find that he’d only walked a couple of yards and could shoot me through the wood — I hurled myself at the door in case, by some fluke, he hadn’t locked it properly, or I could burst free. But the door opened inwards. Even if I’d been heavy enough to break the hinges, I would have had to be on the other side of it. After that I yelled for a bit, kicking at the door in the hopes that some passing ramblers might hear me and come. They didn’t. When my throat was sore and my eyes were stinging, I slumped down on the claggy earth floor and wondered what I was going to do when my captor came back for me.

Getting the element of surprise, grabbing the gun and fighting like a bitch was my only option. I felt a bit weak and silly that I’d let him get the drop on me so easily anyway, especially after I’d recognised him. And who was this bastard anyway? What axe did he have to grind with anyone doing whatever they wanted in these woods? So what if my best friend was black? So what if we had been prancing about, invoking Beelzebub? So fucking what ?

But really. What was I going to do? What had so nearly happened hadn’t felt like something I could talk my way out of. My bum was numb and my back ached at the awkward way I had to hunch. The hut was only about six feet square and I couldn’t stretch either out or up. And what was Kai’s involvement with these men? Did he share their cause? And how long had I got before the guy came back, possibly with his friends?

I indulged myself in another kicking and screaming session, but although it relieved my feelings a bit it didn’t attract any help. The hut was too deep into the woods, too far from any footpaths, and Barndale was too remote for there to be hope of anyone wandering past. My heart skidded again as my generalised fear threatened to spiral down into hysteria and I was suddenly struck with the thought that this guy might come back, rape me, murder me and no one would know where I’d gone. I’d just be . . . gone. Nicholas, my parents, Meg, Cerys . . . would they be left forever wondering, forever hoping that I might turn up?

I lay down on the floor with my face against the gap at the bottom of the door and felt a small draught move my hair. Tears fell hotly, running down into the ground as I lay there feeling stupid. Helpless and stupid. Wishing I still had my mobile, some way of signalling to the world that I was here.

Come on, Holly . You’re noted for being able to talk your way out, or deal, or . . . think.

I cut the self-pity loose and crouched up. The dim, snow-tinted light showed that, apart from half a bag of mouldy-looking grain, the hut contained one wooden pallet with an unopened plastic sack of fertiliser on, two bits of string, a big metal tin that had probably once had something useful in but now contained only a few damp-looking matches, and the wrapper off a Mars Bar which told me I could win a ticket to the 2006 World Cup. Great. I sat on the edge of the pallet with my knees uncomfortably bent double and dug in my pocket. I’d nicked the last of Cerys’s glucose tablets so I wouldn’t starve, and could probably manage to scrape some snow in, so I wasn’t going to spite my captors by being nothing but a freeze-dried corpse when they eventually came back for me. I crunched a tablet, the sweet taste contrasting horribly with my circumstances, and thought.

It was strange how the prospect of being raped and murdered concentrated my mind, and the melting sugar on my tongue swam around my senses, combining with the free-sky blue of the fertiliser bags until an image clicked into my head. Sweet smoke, lots of attention . . . Ooh. All that hanging about on film sets might finally be useful. Fertiliser and glucose. I’d been on set for one spectacular bitch fight between two rival costume guys, where one had bribed some of the backstage boys to build a smoke bomb and set it off in the other’s trailer . . . I’d seen how it was done. All I had to do was replicate it and I could set up a smoke signal that should be visible to anyone in Barndale Woods. With luck they’d at least come to find out what was on fire in such damp conditions . . . Well, what was the alternative? Sit here in this damp, chilly little hut until I got terminal rheumatism or raped at gunpoint? I think I’d go with the possibility of blowing my own head off, thanks.

So I did what I’d been shown how to do. Bearing in mind I’d seen it done by professionals, who’d measured everything and observed all the correct safety procedures, it went surprisingly well for an amateur event, right up until I was trapped in a hut full of sugar-smelling smoke, with a load of burning wooden pallet. The draught came swirling under the door, sucking in oxygen and driving the smoke up and out through the holes in the roof. The fire went out and I started coughing, my breath squeezed out past roughening soreness in my throat as the smoke billowed past me. It stank.

Just then I heard a sound outside the hut. A soft footstep. I stopped breathing. Tears streamed from my eyes as I tried to hold the coughing for long enough to hear what was going on out there, no voices, just the sound of someone being quiet. A brief, exploratory shake of the door, and I barely had time to ready myself before an almighty grinding, splintering sound and the door came flying back into the hut, bringing half the frame with it. I ducked past the smoke, kicked out at the coat-shrouded and hooded figure behind it, and ran. Felt my foot connect with a groin but barely had time to register the grunt of pain as my attacker went down and I was running. Racing headlong into the forest, the snow dragging at my feet, tipping me into drifts that I almost burned my way out of with fear; no idea of where I was going or how many I was escaping from, just head down, panic-stricken running as fast as my smoke-congested lungs and my snow-braked boots would allow.

I sprinted for as long as I could, muscles stretched with fear and my hearing supernaturally alert for the sound of gunshots or pursuit. Ran, weaving through the trees, until with my chest groaning and wheezing I slid down into a hollow surrounded by huge oaks and filled with the cast-off leaves of centuries. There I collapsed. My ribs ached, my legs had no strength left in them and I had the horrible feeling that I’d run back towards Dodman’s Hill rather than away from it. I lay flat, on top of melting snow and surrounded by plastic sheeting and loose earth, gasping as quietly as I could.

After a few minutes, when my breathing had eased, I heard a voice.

‘Holly?’ It was a cautious whisper.

‘Kai!’ Kai? What on earth was he doing out here?

‘Where are you?’

‘Down here,’ I threw a meagre handful of leaves up into the air. It was the only act I had strength for. ‘In this hole.’

‘Jesus.’ There was a moment of scrambling activity on the lip of the depression, then Kai appeared, gingerly sliding his way down to me, bent in half. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I ran. I was in a hut and . . .’

‘Yeah. You kick like a mule, you know that?’

‘That was you ? With the door?’

Kai winced and rubbed a tentative hand across his pelvis. ‘Which is why it took me so long to follow your tracks through the snow. Whatever happened to asking questions first?’

‘I thought you were him! I thought he’d come back with the gun to rape me and if I didn’t get out first chance I had then I probably wouldn’t ever get away,’ I let the words splurge, coasting on relief and spare adrenaline.

‘Ssshh.’ Kai put a finger over my lips. ‘He might still be around, and if I can track you, he can. Can you walk?’

I gave a half-hysterical giggle. ‘Better than you probably.’

‘Come on then.’

‘Where?’ I found myself digging my feet into the loamy compost. ‘You just said that guy might be still around. I don’t want to . . .’

Kai faced me and smiled. It was a rather grim smile. ‘We’ll go back to the Old Lodge. You said you’d come and see Cerys this morning, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Holly, I need to talk to you. And I want you where I can see you when I’m doing it. Or, at least, both your feet.’ He glanced at his groin and let out a little pfffft sound. ‘Bloody hurts.’ He started moving, hit his stride and I might as well have stood on the beach and shouted at the tide for all the notice he took of my protestations. In an echo of my previous abduction his fingers were curled around my arm in an unbreakable grip and he was dragging me along.

‘Please don’t hold on to me.’

Without speaking he broke his hold and held both hands up, fingers spread. Showing he meant no harm, or was it annoyance? I didn’t care. My limbs were trembling with relief and unaccustomed exertion and I couldn’t keep up now without him towing me. I began to lag.

‘Hurry up.’

‘There’s still two feet of snow lying here and I’m not wearing seven-league boots.’ It probably sounded sharper than I’d meant. Panic was only just now seeping out of my blood. ‘Just because you’ve got abnormal legs . . .’

He surprised me by slowing down. ‘Sorry. I want you somewhere safe.’

‘But . . .’

‘We’ll talk when we’re under cover. Now, come on, we don’t want them coming back and tracking both of us down. Can you run again?’

‘I don’t know.’

A cautious, cool hand slipped over my wrist. His fingers wound through mine tentatively. ‘How about if I help?’

‘It’s worth a try.’ I took a deep breath and kept up as, dodging from large tree to large tree like Wile E. Coyote, and slipping and sliding like really bad Dancing on Ice contestants, Kai raced me through the woods until we came upon the reassuringly gargoyle shape of the Old Lodge. He yanked me through the front door and we fell in a panting, messy heap on the hall floor.

‘Wow. Olympics here we come,’ I said, leaning forward to try to get rid of the stitch. ‘Mind you I’m not sure the four mile ski-drag is an accepted sport yet. Perhaps we should appeal . . .’

‘Holly, I know you’re in shock, but please shut up.’ Kai was puffing too, I was glad to see. All those years of debauchery had clearly left him no fitter than I was. ‘We need to talk.’

Cerys shouted down from upstairs. ‘Holly, is that you? You coming to say hello, or what?’

‘She’s talking to me for a bit,’ Kai called back, and there was a moment’s pause.

‘Oh. Oh! Right, yep, get it, you go for it girl. And don’t take any of his bullshit, he fancies you something chronic so you get your demands in first.’ Her door opened and her voice became clearer. ‘I’m up to my ears in here in shit and background noise, so you two let loose and get it out of your systems, and then come in and give me a hand. Oh, Zac, no, not again . . .’ and the door closed.

Kai and I closed our mouths, looked at one another and grinned, then realised simultaneously that our hands were still joined, and there was a moment of slightly embarrassed disentwining. ‘Kitchen?’ I asked, trying to pretend that it hadn’t been at all awkward.

‘I think so.’ He led the way and went straight to the kettle. ‘And tea, for some reason.’

I didn’t say anything. I watched him starting to make tea, being domesticated and comforting, even though I now knew he was the kind of guy who kicks in doors. And my inner feminist protested wildly, but it was nice to be able to sit, hands clamped between my knees to stop them from shaking, tears worrying away at the back of my throat, and know I was safe because of this man. The man who’d also driven through near Alaskan blizzards to find my brother, the man who’d been there when I’d needed him. My opinion of Kai Rhys had changed quite a lot since I’d met him.

He filled the kettle and came to sit on the stool beside me. ‘Right. That talk.’

‘What are we talking about?’ I cleared my throat of the lump of shock and tried to ignore the fact that he’d put himself so close that our legs touched under the table.

‘Look.’ He stared at his hands and twisted the ring on his thumb. ‘Those guys.’ A deep breath. ‘Holly, you’re caught up in something . . . Look, what I do, it’s . . .’

‘You’re a journalist.’

‘Yes, but more than that. I’m an in-ves . . . come on, play with me here.’

‘Not right now,’ I said tartly, and he smiled. ‘You’re an investigative journalist. And a bastard.’

‘In a nutshell. But — I’ve got the knack, teasing out the stories, and when I moved in here and found out about . . .’

‘Why pick on here to live?’ I could feel his arm against mine, see the slight prick of silver earring behind his hair. I was too aware of him, that was the problem. ‘It’s the back of beyond.’ I was shaking. Delayed reaction, or just Kai? Didn’t know, couldn’t tell.

A small shrug. ‘Because . . . when I was found, underneath the Daily Mail there was a small scrap of a local paper, the Gazette and Herald. And I always wondered, was it meant as some kind of clue? Was it something she did subconsciously to lead me here? But . . .’ another shrug. ‘It was something. Something I felt I had to follow. Anyway. Even though I didn’t move for work . . . more to get away from it . . . I came here, and there was this bunch.’

The kettle shrilled and he stood up. Carried on talking with his back to me and I wondered if it was deliberate, if he was making himself busy. ‘Oh, they’re nasty. They’ve already kicked a lad so hard he’s still in hospital. Ruptured his kidneys because they caught him and his boyfriend in the woods. The boyfriend legged it, luckily, went and got help but they hadn’t seen anything, just masked shapes coming out of the trees.’

‘So, how do you know . . . ?’

He brought two mugs to the table. ‘People talk, if you know the right people. And I wondered, you know, about these guys, about what it was that they were doing up there in the woods, what was so important that they had to walk around with guns and scare the shit out of anyone who moved off the official footpaths. I had a good idea, but I got it confirmed by some — well, not friends, but people. But, you know, hearsay is no proof, so . . .’ As he passed me my mug he touched the back of my hand with his thumb.

I wrapped both hands around the reassuringly hot china and stared into the downward spiralling of the swirling liquid. My insides felt as though they were spiralling down after it. ‘So what has this got to do with me?’

He sat back beside me again. ‘Holly. I was watching. I’ve got a telescope set up’ — a wave towards the stairs — ‘on the roof. Keeping an eye on Dodman’s Hill. And then I saw you getting grabbed.’ His breathing stuttered and his words broke.

‘You’ve got a telescope on the roof ?’ I drank some tea, giving myself time to feel my way around this conversation. ‘Wow. Seriously pervy.’

A sudden sharp grin. ‘Yeah. ’Cause those courting couples are tearing their clothes off and shagging up there in their thousands, what with it being the middle of winter and fifteen degrees below freezing.’ He raised his mug and his hand was shaking almost as much as mine. ‘I came down off that roof so fast that Cerys actually thought I’d fallen down the stairs. You can ask her if you don’t believe me.’

‘And why wouldn’t I — Oh.’

His eyebrows arched. ‘Today you kicked me in the bollocks like you meant it.’

‘I didn’t know that was you! Why didn’t you shout out or something, instead of Bruce Willis-ing it?’

‘Couldn’t be sure it was you in there. It could have been one of the guys, could have been anyone. Why weren’t you shouting?’

‘I did. No one came.’ A ridiculous moment of weakness caused a few tears to attempt a mustering in the corners of my eyes.

‘I was out, hunting through the woods and I couldn’t find you and I . . . and then there was all this smoke, I heard the coughing and reckoned someone was in trouble. What were you trying to do, by the way? You looked like you were trying to kipper yourself.’

‘It was a smoke bomb,’ I wished my voice had been steadier. A sentence like that ought to have carried more conviction.

‘A bomb.’ His mouth twitched.

‘Why is that funny?’

‘Oh, it’s not.’ He reached out as though to touch my hair, but let his hand drop. ‘You are a very remarkable woman, Holly Grey. And I want you to trust me. No, it’s more than that.’ His hand went to his own hair and raked through it with a kind of displaced frustration. ‘I need you to trust me.’

‘Why? Why is it so important?’

He stood up again now and began pacing around the kitchen, hands thrust into his pockets like he wanted to stop himself touching anything. ‘You and I. It’s . . . When you came to Leeds and you were there and I realised . . . everything is getting deeper than I’m used to. I’m not great at handling this kind of thing.’

‘You can say that again.’

A momentary look. ‘Yeah, coming from Ms Emotional Fluency. Look, Holl, I saw that guy grab you and I was terrified. I mean really, flat-out shitting myself. That means something to me, the fact that I was so scared for you, it showed me that I — well, goes without saying, Cerys, obviously, and probably the twins too but nothing like it was with Merion. Do you see?’

‘Obscure is your first language, isn’t it?’

He stopped and turned around slowly. His earring was tangled in his hair and for some reason I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. ‘Something is happening, something big, something that feels like elastic stretching between us, snagging us, not letting us go. Something I’m bad at.’ Kai put both hands flat on the table and leaned towards me. ‘And I don’t like being bad at things.’

‘Yesterday I saw you talking to the Ginger Man outside, in the woods. I thought you were part of whatever it is that they’ve got going on.’ It came out way too fast, like I was ashamed of having thought it. Maybe I was, a little. ‘I thought, maybe, you’d set me up.’

He snapped back away from me like I’d hit him. ‘Jesus. God. You seriously thought I’d . . . Woah.’ He went back to the pacing, up and down the flagstoned floor like he was on rails. ‘This is hard to get my head round.’

‘I don’t think it any more.’ My voice was a bit feeble. ‘When you kicked in that door . . . I mean, after I knew it was you, I realised you couldn’t have.’

‘Not just couldn’t, Holly.’ Kai spun on his heel at the furthest extent of his travel and headed back. ‘ Wouldn’t. Jeez, woman, I know I’m a journalist but I do have some scruples. Is that why you wouldn’t stay last night? Because you thought I couldn’t be trusted?’

‘No. I don’t know.’ But I did know. Knew that, all along, Kai had been my ally. That I’d used my trumped-up suspicion of his meeting to try to keep him at arm’s length, because I was afraid of letting myself get close .

‘I’ve been trying to work my way in, yes, trying to get them to trust me. I need . . . I want to blow their whole operation open, so I’ve been trying to get on the inside.’ He closed his eyes and rocked his weight from side to side. ‘The job has come first with me for so long. I should have told you, I should have explained, but I don’t know how to do it. I want you’ — he held up one hand, palm up — ‘and then there’s work.’ He held up the other hand. ‘And I don’t know how to run it all together. I’ve never had to. You’re the first.’ He took one step closer. ‘You’re the first, Holly,’ he whispered.

‘You,’ I started, but my mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips and saw his eyes follow my tongue. ‘So you’re investigating those guys?’

‘It’s drugs, Holly. Okay, yeah, so maybe I used to drink too much, used alcohol to block stuff out and make life a bit easier, but not drugs. Never drugs. I know what they do to you, I’ve seen . . . And these guys . . . they’re running a nice little operation, preying on people in the towns around here; the desperate, the poor, people with no hope. They’re shipping the drugs in and then cutting them down so far that they make a huge profit and . . . I can’t stand back and let it happen. They don’t know I’m a journalist, they see the image and they reckon . . . they think I’m a big time dealer. I’ve told them I can cut them in on some deals in the city, stuff that will make big money rather than selling to the underbelly of North Yorkshire, and they’re all over it.’ Kai cleared his throat and looked away from my mouth. ‘I tried to warn you off, Holly. Didn’t want you getting mixed up in any of this shit.’

‘I could go to the police and tell them that one of these blokes threatened me with a gun and locked me in a shed.’

‘But there were no witnesses.’ Kai looked a lot happier to be talking solid facts rather than wading about knee-deep in emotions. ‘Your word against his. And they’ve got friends, people who would warn you off ever pressing charges with more than a threat of violence. His name’s Andy, incidentally. Ex-military.’

‘Why would anyone believe him over me?’

Kai stared at his hands. ‘They’ve got stuff on you. Pictures of you and your friends doing “magic”. They’ve probably Photoshopped the Devil in by now too, all prepared to use it against you. Proof that you’ve been up to no good in the woods, that you might want to get them locked up to keep the woods to yourselves.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yep.’

‘Why do you do it, Kai? Why not stick to reporting on celebrities and digging the dirt on facelift clinics and stuff like that?’

Kai straightened up suddenly and I had to tilt my head back to keep watching his face. ‘The way I grew up, Holly, I saw a lot of good people go to waste. Losing their chances and their hopes and eventually losing themselves . . . and I fucking hate it. Don’t blame them, for some people there’s nothing else, no real life, nothing to look forward to, why not take something that makes it all easier, let it all go over your head? But it’s the bastards that get behind it, the ones that make all the money, those are the ones I want to bring down, anyone who’s caused that kind of misery, the ones that make their millions on the back of others with no future. The ones that make sure it stays that way, the ones that top up the sales pool every so often with some free samples or cut price deals; the bastards that laugh and take the money . . . Does any of that make sense? I’m sorry, I tend to get a bit soapboxy when I talk about work.’

‘No. You’re . . . I think it’s great.’

‘Really?’ Kai leaned back, propping his body against his arms. I tried not to look at the muscles working under the skin, or the way his tight T-shirt gave definition to his chest. ‘Most women find it a bit freaky that I hang around with people on the edge of the law.’ Thoughtfully he reached his arms above his head in a long stretch, curving slightly backwards until his hair brushed his shoulder blades. It made him look like an erotic statue and then the thought struck me that he was posing for my benefit. I dragged my eyes away, protesting madly, and stared at the surface of my tea instead. It wasn’t nearly so interesting, but it kept my blood pressure within European-legal limits.

‘So you’re trying to catch this lot in the act?’ I said, to the table.

‘Yeah. But I wanted them to stop hassling you, which is why I tried to talk to Michael. To persuade them to leave you alone.’ He came back over to where I had to look at him. ‘I didn’t think I was giving them ammunition. I was a jerk.’

‘A journalist.’

‘Not quite synonymous, but I see where you’re going with it.’

‘No, I mean, you were doing your job. Doing what you thought was right.’

He put both hands on my shoulders and his thumbs caressed my neck. ‘Thanks for the justification, Holl, but it wasn’t right. I should have told you what was going on.’ I let the subtle movement of his fingers relax me a fraction. ‘I haven’t learned to balance it, work and—’ His fingers stilled. ‘Like I said, you’re the first.’ There was a sudden slowing of the world, even the dust hanging in the air between us stopped moving. My heart seemed to beat half-time. ‘Holly. I think there’s something going on here. Something I don’t think I’ve ever been in the right place for before. I see you and how you are with Nick and something inside me just kind of . . . vibrates.’ He put one hand out. It was shaking. ‘I’m falling, Holly.’ Through treacle-thick air he swam towards me.

The artificial gravity began to affect my limbs. Arms too heavy to lift, legs like molten weight and truth was forced out of me by the nearness of him. ‘I don’t know, Kai. I don’t know what this is, and I’m scared.’

‘Hey. Past master at terror.’ A finger moved like silk over my skin. ‘Or is it some unfinished business that’s really frightening you? Something to do with Nicholas?’

‘Nick is going, Kai. He’s talking about moving in with Cerys . . .’

The finger continued to stroke, barely touching me. ‘Yeah. My daughter talks to me, you know. Tells me what’s happening.’ The stroking stopped but the fingertip hesitated, trembling, against my neck. ‘And that’s worrying you, because of us? Because you’re losing your barrier against caring for someone else?’ His hand rose, cupped the back of my head.

‘I’m worried about everything .’

‘Then let it go, just for now. Because I think everything just became very, very different for both of us.’

‘But Cerys . . .’

‘. . . is carefully not listening. You wouldn’t want to waste her dedication, would you, Holly?’

This was something else. I could feel it in every molecule in the room, it was in the edge to his voice, that little catch of his words that made them sound as though everything was for me. When he held out his hand I found myself rising to take it, feeling his fingers close around mine and pull me into his warmth until his mouth connected with mine. Unspoken, another dimension, a deep connection, stretched between us, like wire.

I held onto his hand as he led me upstairs. From Cerys’s room I could hear the sound of a lullaby as she sang to the twins, probably louder than was commensurate with actually putting them to sleep.

‘It’s okay,’ Kai whispered, ‘I can’t even hear the twins cry from my room.’

I wasn’t sure if he was reassuring me that Cerys wouldn’t hear us, or that we wouldn’t have to listen to her singing. The Welsh facility with music appeared to have skipped that particular generation.

Once inside his bedroom door, I stopped. ‘Kai . . . I don’t know if I can do this.’

He turned around and looked at me, that deep, hard look he did sometimes that felt as though it reached right inside my head. ‘You’re scared. Of me?’

‘Of the situation.’

His fingers brushed my face. His thumb ring was cold. ‘Can you tell me?’

‘When you said your relationships were short and intense . . . well, I don’t do them at all.’ I tried to read his expression but it was hard, those yellow eyes reflected emotion back, they didn’t let it out. ‘Hence Aiden and the whole fuck-buddy thing. I’ve never really had a proper . . . anyone I could talk to.’

A steady breath. ‘Do you have many friends, Holly?’

I dropped my eyes and scanned the wooden floor for something to focus on. Anything to distract me from that looking-glass stare of his. ‘Of course! Meg and I have been friends since my family moved back to Malton. We were at school together and . . .’ I stopped. My eyes traced round and round a knot in a floorboard lost in a loop of memory, ‘and she’s known me a long time.’ Wow, that floorboard was just thrilling to look at. Round and round and round . . . ‘Can we not have this conversation now, Kai. Please.’ And I forced my eyes up to meet his darkening stare.

‘Then say it.’

‘Say . . . ?’

‘Tell me this isn’t just some fly-by-night thing, that you don’t just want my body for an hour, a weekend. That I’m different. Because I want . . .’ He dropped his hands to my arms, sliding along to my wrists, my skin bunching under his touch. ‘I want it to be different.’

I watched his hands moving as though the touch of him was somehow separate to the sensations he was causing and my stomach lurched downwards as I tilted my head to see his face. ‘You are definitely different,’ I whispered. ‘And . . .’

‘And?’

‘ And I want you .’

His hands moved from my arms to my shirt, unbuttoning so slowly and carefully that it was all I could do not to knock his hands away and do it myself. ‘Oh Holly,’ his words blew warm over my skin. ‘ Holly .’ He dropped his mouth and kissed me with the same edge as he spoke, thoughts, feelings all on that knife blade that cut through these moments. Everything was sharper, the rush when he touched me, the head-whirling sensations of his mouth on mine, as though life had suddenly come into full focus.

We fell onto the bed, reckless and hungry. I yanked at his T-shirt, trying not to lose his mouth while I dragged it off over his head and skimmed my fingers over his chest, glorying at that first sight of his naked skin. Under his clothes his body was lean as a racehorse, fuzzed with dark hair between his nipples and down across his stomach, and he clearly knew how to use every inch of it. His mouth knew how to tease, where to tease, turning up new erogenous zones with relentless expertise, his hands stripping my clothes from me with such subtle ease that I didn’t realise they’d gone until I felt his cool skin against my own. And his fingers — well. They could pinpoint with almost military accuracy those places guaranteed to make me shiver and gasp.

He was a slender powerhouse. Every inch of him — and there were quite a few — was under control, carefully paced and placed for maximum effect. And when he seemed to consider that he’d done all he could with my outlying regions, he moved to lie above me, hair brushing against my shoulders and eyes burning a hole through my soul.

‘Okay?’

He was looking into the liquid core of me, watching me float about as though my body was so many tectonic plates swirling over a molten heart.

‘ Mmmm , Kai . . .’

His mouth came down. ‘Ssshh,’ he whispered when he raised his head again. ‘I’m just getting started.’

‘Wow.’

‘Oh yes,’ the grin was wicked. ‘In the words of the song, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.’

Slowly at first, achingly slowly, he moved into me, resting his weight on his arms, looking into my eyes, his pupils so huge that his eyes were nearly black and then they descended like twin shooting stars until his face was against mine and his hair traced the contours of my skin. ‘Still okay?’

I just groaned, feeling the weight, the hardness, the sheer intensity of him.

‘Good.’ And then he let rip. Over and over and he didn’t let up, didn’t stop for breath, pinning my arms above my head with one hand, reaching between our bodies with the other, a wave of motion and power and force until his eyes closed, his rhythm faltered and I was arching under him, reaching, stretching as the arch broke, fell, dropped through the maelstrom, plunged screaming into the quiet depths where he was waiting.

‘Oh,’ I was nearly speechless. ‘That was . . .’

He turned towards me. ‘That was the beginning,’ he said, ‘because I think I’m in love with you.’ His face was so solemn, so shadowed that it was almost frightening. ‘I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how it’s going to go and it terrifies me, but all I can tell you is,’ he leaned forward and kissed my mouth softly, ‘this feels nothing like what’s gone before.’

We lay in silence for a while. Outside the rain started up again and rinsed more snow from the woodland floor, hopefully concealing the fact that our footprints ran from the shed straight to Kai’s front door, while underneath the covers, Kai’s hand found mine. ‘You okay?’

‘Stunned, I think. All of this. None of it is what I wished for.’

Kai twisted himself up in the sheet to sit up. ‘And would you have? If you’d known, would you have wished for me?’ He folded those devastating long legs into a yoga pose under the covers.

I looked at the naked torso above me, and ran a finger down his ribs. ‘Maybe. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know that it could feel like this. I’ve always kept feelings out of it, never let things get complicated . . .’

A single raised eyebrow. ‘Complicated? Why should this be complicated? You’ve not got a large angry husband tucked away somewhere, have you?’ His hand left my arm and he was suddenly climbing out of the bed, pulling on his clothes, dragging his shirt on over his concave belly and muscled shoulders. ‘You’d better go and talk to Cerys. Any minute now she’s going to run out of alternate lyrics to “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”.’

‘Are you all right?’ I watched him hook an earring back into place and comb his hair straight with his fingers.

‘Yeah, yeah. Great. Why?’

‘Because you look like you’re getting ready to run. It’s okay. I’m not going to hold you to some lifelong commitment just because we, well, because we’ve done this.’

The eyes came down to look at me properly now and their narrow goldenness took me aback again. ‘What if I want you to? I thought . . . I’ve had no practice at this, you know? I . . .’ He waved a hand at his chest, ‘. . . I feel it, but I don’t know what to do about it. I told you I want this, Holly.’ His expression was hot. ‘I want us .’

‘That’s partly what I meant when I said it was complicated. I think you need answers first.’ I struggled upright to watch him. He’d frozen in the middle of the room like a stag at bay, shirt half way to tucked in and the buttons of his jeans still undone.

‘Answers?’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘I give the answers. That’s what I do, why I write, so that I can deal with the cryptic bastard of a crossword that the universe has thrown at us all.’

‘Before you can let yourself have anything which might be long term you need to stop dealing with problems and let yourself find a solution.’

‘To what?’ His eyes had cooled now, they were hard and reflective like yellow diamond.

I stood up and rested my hand against his chest. I could feel the convulsions shuddering inside, the emotions he was trying to hold down. ‘To who you are, Kai. Isn’t that why you’ve never really formed a relationship? Because you don’t know who you are, where you come from? You need to meet your mother.’

‘Shit.’ He folded down onto the bed, head bent. ‘ Shit .’

‘I’m sorry.’ I knelt down in front of him but he ducked, keeping his expression hidden.

‘No.’ The word was muffled. ‘You’re right. Of course you are. I need . . . some kind of closure before I can start living my life properly, I know that. I know that,’ he repeated, words tight as though his teeth were clenched. Then his head raised and two hell-bound eyes met mine. ‘But why does it have to be so fucking hard ?’

‘Kai.’ I had to repeat his name twice more before he looked at me properly again. ‘It’s okay. You were right, I am starting to realise that all that one-night-stand stuff . . . it’s shallow and pointless and my way of avoiding the issue.’ I let my gaze wander away from him, across the room, taking in the grim coldness of the light, the mawkish sight of a soggy robin on the balcony rail. ‘I know it. Maybe I always did. And now even more so.’

‘Now that you know I’m stupendous in bed, you mean.’ Sharp humour, but something.

‘Yeah, now I know you’re hung like a stallion,’ I agreed. ‘Which is what matters, of course. But I’ll be there. If . . . when you decide to meet her.’

He looked down again, quickly, letting his hair hide his face. Then he nodded, one short movement, dragged in a deep breath and blew it out. ‘I want to know that I’m not — That it wasn’t because of me. That’s all. No excuses, no reasons. I just want to know that I’m not—’ The merest trace of a sob, lost in sudden, violent movement as he leaped up and paced towards the window, fingers busy on the buttons of his shirt. ‘And I’m not the only one who needs closure, am I?’ He spoke with his back turned, body almost pressed against the glass.

‘Sorry?’

Now he spun round, head tilted as though his world view needed adjustment. ‘You and Nicholas. You need to forgive him for not being the perfect big brother, Holly.’

I found I was dragging at the bedcover, pulling it across my nakedness. Putting back that barrier that I’d kidded myself had come down. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You need to think about it.’ Kai spoke gently, although his voice was still uneven. ‘I can’t make you see, Holly. I’m not in the right place myself to be dictating how anyone’s life goes. And besides . . .’ Again, that breaking note, ‘I’m not really the person to talk about forgiveness, am I?’ A quick, mood-changing flick of his head, a grin and he opened a drawer and threw me a shirt. ‘Here. Go prancing around the house in this. Although if Cerys asks for details, I hope you’ll have the decency to fudge over the anatomical stuff.’

Okay, I thought to myself, well, I’m right behind that emotional flip. ‘I’m not sure fudge will cover it. I might have to toffee as well, possibly chocolate coating and a layer of coconut too. It is pretty big.’

‘Hey, what’s your best friend like?’

I thought for a second, then threw a pillow at him.