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Picking up the laptop from the upstairs drawing-room floor, she tucked it under her arm and went downstairs. Her legs felt weak, shaky, as if she’d been in bed for days, not hours.

Could she have lost a day, she wondered, checking the front door – still locked – and repeating the exercise with all the downstairs rooms.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

In the kitchen, she found milk neatly returned to its shelf in the fridge, open but fresh. Bread, Marmite, jam, even chocolate. Piling it all on to the oak table next to the laptop, she broke off a square of Galaxy and put it on her tongue, counting slowly down from ten in her head as she let it dissolve while the kettle came to a boil and the laptop cranked itself to life. When it did, she broke off another square, feeling glucose seep into her system.

She flicked on the old Roberts radio she’d tracked down to one of the unused bedrooms, and stopped on the first station she found, surprised to discover it was noon, but at least she hadn’t lost a day. The sky outside made it seem earlier; overcast but not jaundiced, not the yellow that polluted so many migraine hungover days. And the rain had stopped again. For once the lychgate and the woods beyond weren’t obscured by drizzle.

Filling the teapot to the brim, Helen spread a thick layer of jam on hot toast and logged on to the VPN. Her fingers hovered over the icon for her real email. What had Fran’s email said?
You called Tom … he asked if you still had the same email address …
something like that.

Why Tom, of all people?

One last time, she promised herself, then she wouldn’t look again.

It had been years since she’d last emailed him but she knew the email address by heart, just as she did the phone number. [email protected] There were three emails that she could see, the first sent two weeks ago.

Licking jam from her fingers, she savoured its sweetness and counted back in her head. Yes, the day after the fire. The day after, if what Fran said was true, Helen had called him.

The email was short and to the point. More like a text.

Helen,

Are you all right? Stupid question, obviously you’re not. I’m worried about you. Call me.

Txxx

She read it over again, hand hovering on the reply arrow. What harm would it do? He knew she was alive anyway and ten to one her sister would tell him she’d called.

Just one line: I’m OK, don’t worry. Thank you. xxx

She ached to do it.

But no. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. On either of them.

His second email, sent a week later, was much the same. I’m worried. Call me. Just one kiss this time.

The third had been sent the day before. About an hour after she’d called her sister. ‘Bloody hell, Fran,’ she muttered under her breath.

Helen,

Fran called. She told me about the police. And other things. She doesn’t know what to do. If you’re reading this, you have to call me. Let me help you, Helen. Please.

Tom

Tom. Just Tom.

Helen logged off.

No more Gmail. That was the last time. Someone, somewhere would be able to tell she was opening her email, she was sure of it. It was too risky.

Fran was right. She was good at being alone. Just as well.

Half a loaf of bread, half a bar of chocolate and two pots of tea later the last shadows had lifted. This attack had been different. Shorter, sharper, wreaking havoc with little warning. Moving away as quickly as it had come, like a tropical storm. She hoped it wasn’t going to set a pattern. Too many more like that would finish her, even with her medication. Her eyes skipped over the empty pill packet lying on the worktop and she groaned. There was another problem that hadn’t gone away in the night.

She could sign on at the local surgery, but they’d want a passport or proof of address and she didn’t have one, at least not in a name she was willing to use. Even if they didn’t, and her local infamy was enough, could she persuade an unknown GP to prescribe Clonidine for a simple migraine? They’d want her to see a consultant, have tests. Caroline was her only option; and that meant going to London. It wasn’t the expense that bothered Helen – not that she could really afford it – it was the risk. Helen trusted Caroline, she’d had to over the years, but she had no idea how far medical confidentiality stretched when it came to this.

Back upstairs, Helen dumped yesterday’s clothes, fuggy with the sweat of sleep and the aura of vomit, on her impromptu washing pile on the bathroom floor and slipped into her running kit, point-and-shoot in one pocket, second-hand iPhone in the other. She’d been experimenting; using the phone for still life: half-eaten toast, muddy trainer, dishcloth kicked into a corner.

For years pictures had been the only thing she believed in. To tell a story, to shape the world, to change lives. Take Bill Brandt, or Brassaï’s night photographs of the underbelly of Paris. Or Weegee, so keen to get his crime-scene shots that getting punched was simply part of the job. Famines, migrations, stories of human survival. A part of her envied the old hacks with their press cameras. The photojournalists, drunk on cheap beer, stoned on cheap drugs, and wired on adrenalin and lack of sleep as they brought in the photographs that took America out of the Vietnam War. Pictures made history.

Helen was proof of that. One photograph had given her a career. Another had changed her life irrevocably.

Helen’s pictures had always been of people.

The human cost. Consequences, not conflict. Aftermath.

Big moments in otherwise small lives, or what remained of them. But now … she wasn’t sure she could ever bear to photograph another face because of what she saw there. Innocence of how the world really was. Apart from those who had the misfortune to know, of course. Seeing that knowledge reflected back was even harder.

Helen was so deep inside her thoughts that she barely noticed when she left the road. She came to halfway across a field, instinctively giving the walkers’ trail a wide berth. Grass squelched beneath her trainers, mud oozing into grooves as she cleared the field. It was dry now, but the air was damp, seeping round her windbreaker and under her sweatshirt. If her hair wasn’t tied down it would be getting bigger by the second. The weather out here on the Dales was deceptive. Light that looked forgiving from behind a kitchen window hid a biting wind that chafed her face as she paced herself up the hill to the Scar, her head full of the faces that had haunted her pictures.

Taking out the iPhone, she switched it on, wondering if she would be able to get a signal on the cheap pay-as-you-go SIM she’d persuaded the shop owner to throw in for the price. Before she started, she dipped into her windbreaker for the scruffy Moleskine she’d taken from her nearly empty photo bag and scrabbled backwards through its pages until she found the number she wanted.

Ms Harris, Caroline Harris the consultant, answered the phone herself.

That was more luck than she deserved.

‘Helen, good to hear from you,’ she said, doing an excellent job of not sounding surprised. She was a busy woman; working both for the NHS and in private practice; appearing in court occasionally as an expert witness. Very busy. ‘How
are
you?’ Caroline asked. The enquiry was genuine. She’d become, not quite a friend, but almost, over the years; which was why, Helen told herself, she was prepared to risk trusting Caroline now.

‘Been better,’ Helen said truthfully. ‘Been worse. Just come through a migraine.’

Caroline sighed. A sigh Helen knew she was meant to hear. They had an ongoing difference of opinion about whether what happened to Helen in the fugue state could medically be called a migraine. ‘Where are you?’ Caroline asked.

Grinning, Helen told her the truth. ‘Standing on top of a huge outcrop of rock staring down over a patchwork landscape.’ Helen could almost hear her consultant wonder if that was literal or a description of her state of mind. Deciding her call had gone on long enough to be traced, Helen cut to the chase. ‘I’m out of pills.’

‘Since when?’

Helen counted back in her mind. ‘A couple of weeks. A month.’

‘Long enough. When do you want to come? Tell me and I can make myself free,’ Caroline said. ‘Provided it’s not Friday, that’s operating day.’

They both knew she meant free for Helen. Caroline Harris’s time was like gold dust. A minute later Helen had an appointment for the following Monday, plenty of time to decide whether to drive herself or take the train. Whether to tell her sister she was passing through London. Whether to contact the police.

Helen tried to distract herself by photographing the Scar, noting the time of day and the light in her notebook, shooting first with the phone, then with the point-and-shoot. Neither offered flexibility for exposure, shutter speed or depth of field and she struggled to muster any enthusiasm. The call to Caroline had left her empty. It was a feeling she recognised. A fall always came right after a high. The cold was eating at her and the sky looked less certain than it had. Helen wasn’t the only one who’d been duped by the break in the clouds. The landscape below was alive with climbers and walkers. Even the sheep and birds were noisier than usual. Noisier than she’d heard since she arrived.

When she saw a school party slung out across the valley below – pairs of adults front and rear, marshalling a crocodile of small children in Smartie hues – she started photographing them, for no reason other than primary colours made a change from the more muted grass, rocks and sheep. Hidden behind her phone, she felt far less obtrusive than with a camera. Their erratic meander towards the crag warmed her, as she captured the four adults trying and failing to keep some semblance of a neat line.

She’d reeled off dozens of shots when she first saw the boy. He was standing with his back to her, not quite with them, not quite apart; far closer to her than the main group. The boy was small and dark and, somewhere on the day out, he’d lost his anorak.

He must be cold, she thought, shivering as she tried to zoom in. The boy didn’t move in the frame. Helen swore quietly under her breath. What did she expect from a practically obsolete camera phone? But even from this distance Helen could see his clothes didn’t look right. He looked separate, other, and not just his lack of coat.

Poor kid, Helen thought. She knew how that felt. Picked last for games, no one to sit with on the school bus, no one to hold hands with in the crocodile. Still, there was something about him that was familiar. She started back down the escarpment to get closer.

All it took was one child to trip.

One, perfectly positioned Jenga.

A smallish boy, near the front, took another down with him, or her. A girl, possibly. It was hard to tell, they were all dressed in bright anoraks and dark school shorts. The whole line concertinaed. The crocodile bunched at its head, the tail scattering into groups. They looked like nothing so much as spilt M&Ms. Helen cast about, looking for a single M&M without its primary-coloured coat.

There wasn’t one. He was gone.

Frowning, she scoured the Dales below her. Where was he? Perhaps he hadn’t been with them after all. Perhaps he’d gone with his parents. But there hadn’t been any other adults between her and the school party. Helen was sure of it.

Head down, eyes on the rocks at her feet, she took the winding path at the back of the Scar at a sprint, feeling the jolt in her spine as her trainers slammed into dirt pounded hard by dozens before her. A couple coming towards her moved aside. The woman said something, something snipey. Helen didn’t care. She was so lost in thoughts of the boy she almost missed seeing the man ahead. At least, she missed him seeing her. As Helen reached the final slope she picked up pace, close to flat out, pretty stupid this far from home.

As she tried to swerve, he tripped and fell into her path.

‘Shit!’ she felt her ankle turn on rock. Putting out a hand to break her fall, she landed awkwardly on her wrist, then elbow, somehow managing to wind herself with her knee. Blood rushed to her face as she hit the ground.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what …’ He stopped. Helen didn’t look up, she was too furious; embarrassed and winded.
Don’t look at me,
her body language screamed.
I’m fine. Go away.

‘Are you OK?’ he sounded worried.

Glancing up through the frizz that sprayed from her ponytail, Helen scowled. ‘Yes, fine,’ she said, not really looking at him and not meaning it. She hauled herself up, swiping furiously at the mud that smeared her legs. But getting back on her feet wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. When she put her weight on her ankle it gave.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me. My stupid fault.’

His hand was under her arm before she could resist.

He tried a joke. ‘Like Leeds in rush hour out here today.’

Helen knew she should smile, be polite, but she was too cross – and shaken.

‘It’s fine, really,’ she said, through gritted teeth, trying to shake his hand from her without physically removing it. ‘I just need to walk on it and I’ll be …’

‘Madame Graham?’ she heard his voice change. ‘I mean, Mademoiselle …’

She looked up and her heart sank. His face was familiar. His height. His spectacularly out-of-place suit. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she recognised him exactly, but she knew she’d seen him before and that could only be in one place. To her annoyance, tears sprang to her eyes. Frustration balling in her chest. She groaned audibly and his face collapsed in misplaced worry. He thought she was in agony and he was responsible.

Let him think it. He was sort of right on both counts.

As he fussed and fretted and apologised, Helen gave in to the inevitable and let him take her weight. She could have limped her way home alone eventually, but why bother?

She could just imagine how they looked, lurching across the Dales. Her hopping, him half carrying her with his hand under her elbow rather than around her waist where she could tell he was resisting putting it. As they lurched three-legged through the straggle of ramblers, Helen swore inwardly. First a migraine, now this. Stranded in the middle of a field with no transport, one good leg, in the clutches of a concerned neighbour.