Samantha Ferringham got off the train, trailing her case behind her. She checked her watch, thought about getting a taxi to her hotel and then decided she would walk. Despite requesting a table seat on the train, she had found she had been given a squished-up seat next to the window, and when she had work to do, it wasn’t ideal. She had to balance her laptop on the small tray table and strain down to see the screen. Therefore, she felt the walk would probably do her good, allowing her to stretch her aching legs. And besides, her phone said the hotel was only a mile away from the station, even if it did look to be out in the sticks a little.

Before she set off, she tried to call Robin. It went to voice mail. He was probably still agonizing over his article, so she decided to try again when she got to the hotel.

She started walking away from the center of Huddersfield, following the blue line on the map on her phone. She checked her watch—it had got dark a lot quicker than she had expected and she didn’t really have anything to make her visible on the narrow winding roads she was going to have to traverse. She pressed on, though, deciding that if it got too dark she would turn on the light on the back of her phone.

Her thoughts were awash with things she had to do. With the restricted words per minute achieved from awkwardly placed limbs on the train, she still had to finish the worksheets she was compiling for the seminar. But then, that was why she had padded out the trip with an extra day. Tomorrow, she planned to go to the university to talk with the staff there, and the rest of the day would be free for work. She always liked to go in to introduce herself early, to observe where she was going to be lecturing and to get the lay of the land. She had never been to Huddersfield Uni before, and she didn’t want to do something stupid like turn up late to her own seminar.

It started to get darker, and she checked her phone. She would call Robin when she got to the hotel—he worried if she didn’t. When you met someone like Robin—someone who was so completely what you wanted—you wanted to share everything with them. When she and Robin married, it wasn’t only the happiest day of her life, but she knew it would be the happiest she would ever be.