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evening.’
    â€˜Right, he’s going to be upset by all of this.’
    â€˜Hmm, and Reg Fine, the DS you met at the house,’ Alec continued, ‘he’s going to arrange for us to be taken to where they found Rupert.’
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜Hopefully tomorrow. All we are going to do today is eat and rest. Doctor’s orders.’
    â€˜What doctor?’
    â€˜Doctor Friedman.’
    Naomi laughed. Alec seated her at their table and settled Napoleon. ‘Seriously love, you had a really bad fright. I want you to be all right.’
    â€˜I’m fine. What I’d really like is to have lunch then go for a walk and just have some unwinding time. We’ve not had a proper chance to look around yet. Let’s make like tourists for a while?’
    â€˜Whatever you want to do. We can do the John Wesley trail, if you like. That would be a good way of finding out about the town.’
    She nodded. ‘I’d forgotten about the whole Methodist thing. Nonconformist territory, isn’t it, around here? I vaguely remember Mum insisting we did all that one holiday. Looking at Wesley’s tomb and an old rectory, I think.’ She shook her head. ‘It was a long time ago.’
    â€˜Funny how we both spent our holidays round here,’ Alec commented. ‘OK, we’ll do all of that and see what the shops have to offer. The girl on reception told me there’s a ghost walk tonight, if you feel up to it.’
    â€˜Um, maybe.’ She was aware that she was not responding with the enthusiasm Alec would have liked and aware that would worry him even more than he was already, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Though she was trying to seem outwardly calm and her heart rate had long ago returned to normal, there was a little piece of her brain still switched into panic mode and when someone close by dropped a glass it was all she could do not to leap to her feet and run away.
    Her response made her angry, irritated with herself. She’d been in worse situations, she reminded herself. Under greater threat, or equal threat at least. Hadn’t she?
    To be truthful, she was no longer certain that was the case. Something about the way the man had responded to her. The rage she had sensed, and which had been barely contained, unsettled her. No, more than unsettled; it shook her to the very core. It wasn’t normal, Naomi decided. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t sane.
    Naomi attended to the starter which had just arrived and tried to divert her thoughts. The statement had taken a while to make. First off she had presented what had happened in bald facts, trying to keep events in the right order and tell her story as clearly as possible. Gently, Alec had coaxed the finer details from her. Naomi was surprised at how much she could in fact remember. The scent of aftershave. The taste of tobacco on the man’s skin when she had bitten him. The rough skin at the side of his fingers. The lighter footsteps of the other man.
    â€˜What are you thinking?’ Alec asked her.
    â€˜Nothing much.’
    â€˜Nomi?’ Alec chided gently.
    She took a deep and slightly quavering breath. ‘I was going over the statement in my head,’ she said. ‘In case I’d forgotten anything.’ It was, she thought, only a small lie. Just a little omission.
    He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Forget it now,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves for the rest of the day. Tomorrow when we see DS Fine again, we may have more information to add to the puzzle. Nothing you can do about it now.’
    She knew he was right and she wanted so much to be able to put this from her mind and allow herself to be distracted. She wasn’t fooled for one moment that Alec was any less preoccupied and in part she wanted to tell him to stop pretending and just give in and talk this thing to death. The more sensible, thinking part said