Chapter Eighteen
Ross sat in front of the glowing stove, but all evening he had been unable to relax in its soothing warmth. He held his phone
in his hand. Still no reply to his text. Was she sulking? No, that wasn’t like her at all. Was she so deeply distressed she
was left without words for him? God, he hoped not but—he realized with a fist-clench of guilt around his heart, if she was,
it was because of him. He replayed their conversation in his mind on a punishing loop. It had been less of a conversation
and more a monologue from him, he thought bitterly; on reflection, he had been telling her how he would like the world to be. He had selfishly put his own priorities first: for her to represent him with this new work, for
them to end their relationship because—well, absolutely not because he wanted to—but because his terror of repeating past
mistakes had made even relinquishing one of the most precious things in his life seem a price worth paying.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
He texted her again. Just a question mark this time. A nudge to remind her of his earlier text, simply asking if she was okay.
Then, despite it being—of course—a rude and unwelcome imposition, he called her. With his phone on speaker, he sat staring
at her name on the screen, listening to the ringtone, willing her to pick up.
It rang out. Not even a mailbox message. Not even a chance to hear her voice.
So she wasn’t okay. Obviously.
He held this thought painfully in his head for a few minutes. And then he stood, despite having no clear plan other than going
down to Capelthorne’s to hammer on the door and insist that she speak to him face to face. Even though her silence made it
very clear that he—the cause of her distress—was probably the last person on earth she wanted to see.
Striding down the main street, he was surprised to see Flo standing by the door to Capelthorne’s with Digger at her feet.
Even from a hundred yards away, her anxiety was visible.
“She’s not with you, then?” Flo called, recognizing him as he approached.
“No,” he told her as he arrived at her side. “What do you mean? You’re looking for her too?”
“I arranged for her to dogsit while I was at choir practice,” Flo explained. “She always does it on a Thursday night, the
lovely girl. He gets separation anxiety and becomes destructive, so I don’t like to leave him. It’s just not like her to forget.”
“What have you tried?” he asked.
“Knocking . . . phoning . . . but—nothing. No sign of her.”
“Could she have gone out?” he suggested. “Perhaps to get something to eat? She sometimes meets friends in the pub for a drink,
doesn’t she?”
“Only on Fridays, generally,” said Flo. “And I’ve been in and spoken to Freya. She hasn’t seen her this evening either.”
“Maybe the supermarket over the bridge?” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself.
“What, for an hour and a half?” said Flo.
“You’ve been here that long?” he asked curtly, looking at his watch. Nearly half past nine. The little supermarket had been
closed for half an hour already, and it was only a five-minute walk.
“Then she must be in the flat,” said Ross. “Something’s definitely wrong . . . Do you have a key?”
“I didn’t bring it,” admitted Flo. “I wouldn’t have needed to, but I was wondering about driving back to Middlemass to get
it.”
“No time,” said Ross, assessing the door critically. The lock on it looked pretty robust, but he could break one of the glass
panes and reach in.
“There are bolts top and bottom too,” said Flo, following his gaze. “If you’re planning to break in, I think your best bet
is to go around the back.”
She was already walking away, assuming he would follow.
On Flo’s instruction, Ross clambered over the wall into the little courtyard garden at the back of the shop, then extracted
a brick from below a terra-cotta planter and used it to smash a window in the back door. As Flo had promised, he made quick
work of gaining entry.
Not pausing to assess the damage to the door, Ross ran up the stairs to the flat, his pounding heart being only partly because
of the exertion. He searched the rooms upstairs rapidly, throwing open doors and not allowing himself to think of the horror
of finding Petra slumped on the floor, unconscious. Or worse.
“She’s not here,” he barked, as he rejoined Flo outside. “And she doesn’t have her phone. It’s on the table. Is there anywhere else you can think of that she might have gone to?”
“There’s no Write Club or Beach Reads tonight,” said Flo. “And, in any case, that would mean her being in the shop . . . I
did wonder if Jess was meeting up with her to talk about the literary festival this evening, but I bumped into Jess in Middlemass
this afternoon, and I happened to mention the dogsitting. If she had plans with Petra tonight, she would have said so then.”
They stood silent, at a loss, for a few seconds, both looking up and down the street as if willing Petra to approach by sheer
force of determination.
“Could she have decided to go and see you?” ventured Flo at last.
“I was thinking the same,” said Ross grimly. It wasn’t impossible. He could quite imagine Petra coming to the cottage, having
decided to give him a piece of her mind for his selfishness. It was just about conceivable that she could have gone another
route, missing him as he walked down to the shop.
“I can’t think of anything else,” he said, his eyes narrowing in concentration. “Right, let’s go there,” he said, setting
off, but Flo grabbed his arm.
“My car is just over there,” she said. “We’ll drive.”
After a million years of dull, cold, exhausting effort, the slope became gentler in a way Petra recognized. The summit at
last!
She numbly reached for the bench in the darkness, lowering herself onto it stiffly, a single tear leaking from her eye. She
sniffed. Now was not the time for self-pity. This was their bench. The location of many happier times, just her and Ross. At that thought, the misery of her current situation consumed her again. She allowed herself a minute of weeping, wearily wiping her running nose on her sleeve.
Sheesh, it was hot now. The climb to the top of the peak must have raised her body temperature, unlikely though that sounded,
as she was still unable to feel her hands and feet. It was really boiling, though. The thin jacket and sweatshirt she was wearing suddenly felt unbearably constricting.
In a near frenzy, she tore them both off, dropping them on the ground at her feet before lying down stiffly on the hard bench.
She needed to rest. Just for a minute. And then—she promised herself—she would start the slow descent.
Time drifted.
Her cheek was painfully cold, resting against the bench as she gazed dully at her clothes on the ground. The thought of using
them as an impromptu pillow arrived slowly and the impetus to enact the thought was even slower. She balled up the fabric
and then lay back down again, snuggling into the softer surface. That was better.
Petra closed her eyes.
There was no sign of Petra at the cottage. Ross groaned in worry and frustration. He imagined he could feel her presence close
by as he stood, indecisive, willing her to put into his mind an image of where she was. Flo was standing at his elbow, looking
equally concerned.
And then Ross knew. “She’s gone up to the bench,” he said.
“Where?”
“Top of the hill, the bench on the summit, she—we—go there . . .”
“You can’t go up there in the pitch black,” Flo told him.
“I damned well can,” he said as he let them both into the cottage. If she were indeed at the bench, then she was up there in the pitch black without even the flashlight from her phone. She could be injured. Or ill. Either way, she
needed him.
“Wait here,” he instructed Flo, chucking another couple of logs into the stove to keep her warm while she waited. Digger was
already settling on the hearth, lying down and resting his head on his paws, his eyes swiveling anxiously to Flo and Ross
in turn.
Ross grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa and then dived into the cupboard under the stairs, coming back out with a
huge black waterproof flashlight.
“I’ve got my phone,” he told Flo as he went to the door, tapping the screen to add a new contact. “Quick, shout out your number?
I’ll call you.”
Flo obliged. “If you can even get a signal,” she added, anxiously. But he was already gone.
Ross’s mind was spiraling into various disaster scenarios as he half-walked, half-ran up the steep slope, his thigh muscles
burning, although he was barely aware of the pain. It was all his fault. He had been an idiot, thinking they could morph like
that, from friends—more than friends—to just another business relationship. Faced with the horror of losing her, he realized
Petra was so much more than that to him. He knew that now.
He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
The flashlight illuminated swirls of freezing mist in front of him, casting the rest of the landscape into velvet black darkness.
His breath came in heavy plumes, and he could discern a sparkle to the gray-white tussocks of grass.
Frost. In May. Unlucky, but not that unusual.
If she was lying somewhere injured, she would not last long in these temperatures.
The thought spurred him on even harder. What if he walked straight past her, unaware?
He began to call her name, punching it out into the void, and then listening, trying to hold his breath, terrified he would miss any faint reply.
He was nearly at the summit now. Just one last push. If he got there without having found her, he didn’t know what he would
do next. But he couldn’t afford to worry about that now.
Calling and listening was slowing his progress. He stopped briefly to push his screaming muscles into a final effort and then . . .
he was at the summit.
Just for a second or two, he leaned forward panting, his hands resting on his agonized thighs. The bench was just yards away
now but all the flashlight would show him was the swirling fog.