I think you’ll feel sorry for him more than anything else.

I don’t know what I’ll feel.

There’ll be a lawyer with you.

Oh God.

Honestly, don’t panic. I promise. You got this.

How do you know? You haven’t met me. I might be completely useless.

Not according to my sources.

She half smiled at that.

Have *you* been in a court case?

There was a long pause.

Yes.

What was it?

Friendly fire.

Lissa blinked.

Did you shoot someone??

No. It was a friend of mine. A translator, working with us. Out with his friends. Some of the squaddies got a little . . . well.

He got shot.

Everyone got shot.

He deleted that last message, but it was somehow worse now that he’d deleted it; it made it clear that it had had a big impact on him. Which it had.

Lissa looked at it for a long time.

What are we like? she typed finally, adding a row of screwy-face emojis.

Cormac looked up at the gray river and smiled to himself. Suddenly in the midst of eight million people he felt incredibly close to someone very, very far away.

Eejits, he typed.

Lissa smiled to herself.

Eediats, she typed back.

And that was the moment Cormac nearly called her. He almost pressed the button. But what if he called her and she didn’t pick up? What would he do then? What if he broke the connection, ruined everything. He thought of Jake telling him he didn’t behave well with women. He thought too of Jake, who, he thought, was dating her. Oh Lord. Well. He put his phone back in his pocket so he wasn’t tempted.

He was so tempted.

Lissa stared at the screen. Maybe he would just call? Throw caution to the wind? Call and talk and tell her everything? She wondered if he sounded like Jake, with that melodious Highland accent. Maybe deeper; Jake said he was taller than him. She sighed. This was ridiculous. She was building it into something it absolutely wasn’t. The wind rustled through the trees.

But just connecting had worked somehow. He had calmed her down, made her feel better. She straightened up again, looked around her. The birds were calling, high up in the fresh bright air. Their days, she supposed, were all the same. The world was awake around her.

And it wasn’t going anywhere. The trees had been here for hundreds of years. The wood had stood through wars and great changes, but had never been uprooted. The foxes and rabbits lived their lives; the deer ran; the trout still jumped in the stream; the seals still flapped along the lochside.