In a moment of pure instinct, she lifted her head and sank her teeth into the smooth skin of his shoulder. Then, while he was yelping in pain, she used every bit of strength in her five-foot-five frame to rock him to her left, getting him off-balance and thereby gaining enough momentum to swing him back in the other direction. The plan was to fling him off her so she could escape.
The plan was flawed.
He tumbled over, all right, but as she tried to crawl away he got hold of her right foot and dragged her back towards him. Ellie tried to stop herself by twisting over and clawing at the rug, but large tufts just came away in her fingers. And then she realised she was travelling further than she’d scurried away. She was being dragged back towards the bed.
That was when she started shouting. A wave of white-hot anger swept up her body.
How dared he?
‘Get out of my bedroom!’ she screamed. ‘Or I’ll—’
‘What?’
He was angry, but there was something more in his voice—confusion?
Harsh light flooded the room, accompanied by the click of a switch. Ellie peeled her face off the carpet and blinked a few times, desperate to focus on anything that might give her a clue as to where the door was. Her eyes began to adjust, and she made out a tall figure against the pale blue of the wall.
Pale blue? Oh, help! My room is a kind of heritage yellow colour.
She crinkled her eyelids until they were almost shut, and swivelled her head to face her attacker. Through the blur of her eyelashes she saw a pair of deep brown eyes staring at her. There was something about them…Had she dreamt about a pair of eyes just like that before she’d woken up? Half a memory was lodged somewhere, refusing to make sense.
Ellie’s chest reverberated with the pounding of her heart and she felt the fire wash up her face and settle in the tips of her ears. He looked as astonished as she felt.
She had seen those eyes before, but not in her dreams. They hadn’t been scowling then, but laughing, twinkling…
Ellie let out a noise that was part groan, part whimper as the memory clunked into place. She started to collect her limbs together and move away.
‘I’m…I’m…so sorry! I got lost in the dark…’ She shot a glance at him, but his face was still etched with confusion. ‘I mean, I thought you were a—a maniac.’
He blinked. Something told her his assessment of her hadn’t been dissimilar.
‘Mr Wilder…I…’
‘I know who I am. Who on earth are you?’
She licked her lips—they seemed to have dried out completely—and cleared her throat. ‘I’m Ellie Bond, your new housekeeper.’
One month earlier
Ellie’s limbs stopped working the moment she crossed the threshold of the coffee shop. The woman in the red coat was early. She wasn’t supposed to be here yet, but there she was, sitting at a table and reading a newspaper. After a few seconds the door swung closed behind Ellie, hitting her on the bottom. She didn’t even flinch, mainly because she felt as if she’d swallowed a thousand ice cubes and they were now all jostling for position as they slowly melted, spreading outwards through her body.
The woman’s long dark hair almost touched the tabletop as she bent over an absorbing story. Chunky silver earrings glinted in her ears when she flicked her hair out of the way so she could turn the page. Earrings that Ellie had given her for her last birthday.
The woman hadn’t noticed Ellie yet, and she was glad about that. She stared harder. Perhaps if she just stood here for a moment, took her time, it would come to her.
Something the woman was reading must have bothered her, because she stiffened and, even though her head was bowed, Ellie knew that three vertical lines had just appeared above the bridge of the woman’s nose. That always happened when she frowned. When people had been friends for more than a decade, they tended to notice little things like that about each other without even realising it. The brain collected a scrapbook about a person, made up of assorted images, sensations, sounds and aromas, all of which could be called up at a moment’s notice. And Ellie had plenty of those memories flooding into the front of her consciousness right now—untidy college bedrooms, the smell of dusty books in the library, the giggles of late-night gossip sessions…
A fact that only made the current situation more galling.
Ellie couldn’t remember her name.
Since the accident, finding the right name or word had become like rummaging around in the cupboard under the stairs without a torch. She knew the information she wanted was in her brain somewhere, but she was fumbling in the dark, not really knowing what she was looking for and just hoping she’d recognise it when she finally laid hold of it.
A waitress bustled past her, and the movement must have alerted her friend to the person standing at the edge of her peripheral vision, because she looked up from her newspaper and smiled at Ellie.
Ellie waved back, but behind her answering smile she was running through the letters of the alphabet, just as she’d been taught at the support group, to see if any of them jogged her memory.
Anna? Alice? Amy?
The woman stood up, beaming now, and Ellie had no choice but to start walking towards her.
Belinda? No.
Brenda?
The chunky earrings bobbed as her friend stood and drew her into a hug. Ellie just stood there for a moment like a rag doll, and then she made a conscious decision to contract her arm muscles and squeeze back. Not that she was opposed to hugging; it was just that her brain was far too busy ferreting around for the right letter, the right syllable, to get her started.
Christine…Caroline…Carly?
Carly. It seemed right and not right at the same time.
A whisper tickled her ear. ‘It’s so good to see you, Ellie!’
Ellie knew her friend would understand if she just admitted her memory blank. But Ellie was fed up with being understood. She just wanted to be—to live her life the way everyone else did, without the sympathetic glances. That was why she’d arranged this meeting in the first place.
A familiar sensation washed over her. She imagined it to be what it might feel like if portions of her memory were buoys, chained to a deep and murky ocean floor, and then all of a sudden one freed itself and floated upwards, arriving on the surface with a plop.
Charlotte Maxwell.
‘Hi, Charlie,’ she said, and finally relaxed into the hug. ‘It’s good to see you too.’
She tried not to, but as she pulled away and sat down Ellie sighed, deep and hard. Charlie tilted her head and looked at her.
‘How are you?’
Ah. How innocent that phrase sounded. How kind and well-meaning.
Ellie had come to hate it. People were always asking her that, normally wearing a concerned expression. Oh, she wasn’t fooled a bit. It wasn’t small talk. Chit-chat. What people wanted from her when they asked that question was a full psychological and medical rundown.
She smiled, but her lips remained firmly pressed together. ‘I’m great. Really.’
Charlie kept staring at her. ‘Still getting the headaches?’
‘Only occasionally,’ she replied, shrugging the observation away.
The wicked twinkle returned to Charlie’s eyes as she stood back and looked Ellie up and down. ‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ she said.
Ellie automatically raised a hand to feel the blunt ends of her