Page 65 of The Friend Request

He doesn’t dismiss it. He doesn’t laugh or wave his hand or tell me I’m imagining things, which I’m grateful for, because I’ve had enough of men telling me what I did and didn’t see. He thinks about it, tipping his head, and then he nods.

‘Could have been a few things,’ he says. ‘There’s a gatepost up there that catches people out – it’s at an odd angle and in the dark it looks like a person, especially if the cloud’s low. And the sheep get up on the ridge at night sometimes. They don’t move much when they’re settled, so from a distance they can look like – well, like all sorts. I’ve been here forty years and I still do a double take at the odd one now and then.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘That makes sense.’

‘You’re safe up there, Kim. I promise you that. There’s nobody for miles. The nearest house after mine is the Evanses’ place. That’s a good three miles down the valley, and they’re in Tenby this week visiting their daughter. You’ve got me, you’ve got the sheep, and you’ve got the odd fox. That’s your lot.’

He says it warmly, and I know he means it as comfort – you’re alone, but you’re safe alone, and the aloneness is a feature, not a threat. And part of me takes that in and believes it, the same way I believe the gatepost and the sheep and the low cloud play tricks. Of course that’s what I saw. I’m a woman who’s spent the past week wired with fear and suspicion, sleeping badly, checking locked doors twice, jumping at wind. My eyes turned a fence post into a figure because that’s what frightened eyes do.

But the other part of me – the part that knows about the blue curtains and the messages and the man who turned up at my birthday party and held my wrist – hears Jeff say there’s nobody for miles and feels the bottom drop out of my stomach.

Nobody for miles. No neighbours. No passing traffic. No street lights, no CCTV, no police station round the corner, no Alex on the other side of the bed. Just me and a locked door and a cottage at the end of a gravel track in a valley where the nearest help is an old man in slippers who goes to bed at nine.

Jeff must see something shift in my face, because when he reaches across the table and tops up my tea from the pot, his voice goes gentler.

‘It does take some adjusting,’ he says. ‘The dark out here is a different beast to what you’re used to, I expect. But you get into a rhythm with it. Light the fire early, close the curtains before sunset, give yourself something to do with your hands. Margaret used to knit. I do the crossword. Doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it keeps you from sitting there listening to the wind and letting your imagination run off with you.’

‘Good advice,’ I say, and I mean it, even as the cold feeling in my stomach refuses to shift.

We talk for another twenty minutes. He shows me a photograph of Margaret at their wedding – young, dark-haired, laughing, holding a bouquet of wildflowers she’d picked herself that morning because the florist had let them down – and the fondness in his voice when he describes her dress makes my throat ache. Forty-one years. I’ve had thirteen with Alex and I might be about to lose them. This man had forty-one and lost them to something nobody could have prevented, and he’s still here.

The dog gets up from its bed and pads over and rests its chin on my knee. I scratch its ears, and it closes its eyes, and for a moment everything feels all right. Warm kitchen, hot tea, a gentle dog, a good man. The world outside can wait.

But it can’t. It never can.

I stand and thank him, then carry my mug to the sink. He waves me away from it – ‘Leave that, I’ve got nothing else to do’ – and walks me to the door. The collie follows us and sits on the step, watching me with that alert, tilted gaze that border collies have, as if it’s assessing whether I’m going to do something interesting or just leave.

‘Thank you, Jeff,’ I say. ‘For the tea and the cake and – just for being kind. It’s been a lovely afternoon.’

‘Any time. I mean that.’ He leans against the door frame, folds his arms, and looks at me.

There’s something in his expression that’s hard to name – not worry exactly, but a gentle attentiveness, as if he’s noticed I’m carrying something heavier than boredom and has decided not to ask what it is.

‘If you ever need help, Kim – anything at all, day or night – you come and knock. I don’t care what time it is. I’d rather you woke me up for nothing than sat up there on your own wondering whether to bother me.’

‘Thank you,’ I say again, and my voice catches on the word, which I cover by zipping my coat and turning towards the path.

‘Get back before the light goes,’ he calls after me.

I raise a hand without turning around, because if I turn around he might see my face, and my face isn’t holding up the way I need it to.

I climb the hill. The wind picks up as I reach the ridge, cold and damp against my cheeks, and I stop at the top and look down at the cottage below – white walls, blue door, the track winding away to the lane, the fields spreading out on either side like a green sea with nothing in it.

Nobody for miles. That’s what Jeff said. Nobody for miles, and he meant it as reassurance.

I cross the ridge and start down the other side, and the farmhouse disappears behind me. The cottage gets closer, the sky already dimming at the edges.

If you ever need help…

I want to believe that’s enough. I want to believe that a kind old man with a kettle and a collie and a bedtime of nine o’clock is enough to keep me safe in a place where nobody would hear me scream.

But I think about the shape on the ridge, the messages, the way Ross’s thumb felt against my pulse, and I pull my coat tighter and walk faster. The cottage door has never felt so far away.

I hope I won’t need Jeff’s help.

I hope it won’t be too late if I do.

Chapter Thirty