A Chance Encounter by Rae Shaw (best ereader for academics .TXT) 📕

‘Doesn’t give you the right to tell me how to drive,’ Mark said brusquely, while grinning from ear to ear.

Two months after she had invited him to move in with her, their relationship had grown in strength and his anger had diminished. The only issue to mar things was his relationship with his family. Julianna hoped visiting his dad would heal some of those stresses. She let him take the car to Manchester to visit his father. While he was there, he sent a text explaining a change of plan; he added an extra, considerably longer journey. He’d spontaneously decided to visit his sister.

Upon his return home, he handed back the car keys, apologising for the extended loan by way of a brisk, sheepish smile. Julianna supported the decision. Checking the car, she noted the mud splattered tyres and sand in the footwell of the passenger seat.

Fatigue was etched on his face. He pecked her cheek, cautiously. She could be patient.

She took his coat. ‘Well?’

The details of his conversation with Bill slipped out over dinner, which he failed to finish. Mark was disappointed that Bill had refused Jackson's offer of help. She wasn't surprised. As he washed the dishes, she draped her arms around his waist.

‘Don't fret,’ she said. ‘You don't have to forgive him, just know that he did it and the reason why. That's all. It's not as if he's wallowing in self-pity about it. Perhaps things might change in the future.’

‘How?’ Mark sighed. ‘He'll always be watching his back in case of retribution.’

Julianna buried her nose in his shirt. He smelt of sea salt and something else, the legacy of the prison with its sweaty bodies and confined spaces. They both needed to watch their backs and each other. She hoped Ellen was safe up in Scotland.

‘Tell me,’ she said, leading him to sit on the sofa, side by side. ‘About Ellen.’

‘Going up there after seeing Tim in Manchester, it felt like the right thing. I couldn’t answer Tim’s questions about Ellen, like how’s she doing. Felt bad about it. I stopped over in Edinburgh, not far from where she’s living with Malcolm, and he told me where to find her.’

Malcolm was Derek's spy, of course. They were half-brothers. In return for free lodgings, Ellen provided rudimentary care for Malcolm by way of meals, doing the laundry and cleaning the house. She had arrived in Edinburgh with nothing but a familiar suitcase full of clothes and the address of a stranger. The rest of her things remained boxed up at Fasleigh House. If it wasn’t for their trust in Jackson and his friend, Derek, they would have never countenanced the idea of her lodging with a man she had never met, especially after her experience in Dublin. Derek ran various archaeological projects in Scotland and northern England, but he wasn't just a professor of archaeology, he had ties to Opportunitas.

Malcolm was a retired surgeon. Julianna had been briefed by Chris. Only a handful of people knew Ellen’s location, even fewer knew Malcolm's address. Ellen received cash payments to cover expenses – and her mobile number had been changed. Chris had told Ellen to stay off social media. She had been isolated, cut-off. But she wasn't a prisoner. Nobody was preventing her from returning to either London or Manchester. She was free to travel anywhere, even if her life was shaped by different people.

‘She was out at a cove looking at a tidal mill, some marks on the rocks. Hard to see unless you’ve got a good eye for it. She’s a neat artist, showed me her sketches.’

He described the landscape, the sodden turf, the wet sand and stench of seaweed. His sister, buffered by the sea breeze, happily working alone with her pad and pencils. ‘I parked the car on the sea front – it’s okay, not a scratch on it – and she climbed up to say hello.’

Had they embraced? Julianna liked to thing they might have done, but she doubted it.

Mark continued, his voice a little hazy and distant. He wasn’t in the room with Julianna, but somewhere windswept and hopefully beautiful, especially for a man who had lived all his life in cities. ‘We spent some time apologising.’ He chuckled, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

‘Oh?’

‘I told her I should have stood up to Mum. I should’ve asked the right questions, instead of assuming he was innocent. I didn’t open up to Ellen, and I regret it.’ Mark turned to Julianna. ‘She sat in the car, and I thought, given how quiet she was, that I’d got things wrong. But it turns out, she’s better at patience than me. She accepted it all without a harsh word.’

Julianna patted his hand. ‘You’re learning a different kind of patience.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’ He puffed at his lips. ‘Anyway. She apologised for not being honest with me about Dad, and Freddie. She’s tired of hating.’ His voice broke slightly. ‘She asked me for help, to help her not hate them. I don’t know if I can.’

There had been other conversations like that one, mostly by email. Jackson had suggested Ellen speak to a psychologist or a counsellor. According to Mark, she had scoffed at the idea. Nobody like that had ever helped her before, and wasn't that exactly how she had gone wrong with Freddie? She had politely turned down the offer. Julianna wasn’t sure if it was the right decision, but Mark had agreed with his sister. The nightmares would go, and, eventually, Ellen would learn to let go of the blackness inside, the dread that woke her up some nights screaming. She never saw a person, just a thing, an entity. Julianna understood the origins of that nightmare – the bogey man never had a face, only a presence, which was why she had crafted one on her punch bag.

Mark blinked, recovering