But if all one strove for in life was love, then the world would only be half of what it was. It’d be filled with sonatas and films and books and plays, with little innovation, little consequence, little conquest. Beings were made to multiply; humans were made to thrive. Sam loved being a traveling professor, lecturing up and down the country—meeting people and teaching them about psychology. Maybe it was because she learned from the best herself, and maybe it was because the subject fascinated her—and the more she worked, the more she studied, the more she found out, she just grew more and more curious. Human behavior was so incredibly complex, and it was different for everyone. Sometimes, in her most academic moments, she thought of the seven billion case studies walking around out there—each totally different, each forever changing. By the time you’d finished a case study, it would be outdated. “A person going to bed wasn’t the same person who woke up,” her mentor had said—a warm and brilliant old man called Simon Winter. That quote was what had drawn her in further to psychology, and cemented the fact that she was going to dedicate her life to it. “Always look close enough to examine a subject,” Dr. Winter had said, “but never look too close to fall in.” She supposed that was what happened with her and Robin. She had fallen into him—and she wasn’t coming out, not that she wanted to.

She got to the end of the streetlights—the roads she was going to have to traverse from here on would be pitch-black. The winding narrow road she was going to have to take seemed a little narrower and more winding than she was happy about. She wondered whether she should turn back and get a taxi, but there were no taxis on the street she was on, and she’d have to retrace her steps. That seemed a little bit too much like admitting defeat, so she pressed on.

A little hiking wouldn’t kill her.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Three years ago...

They went dancing. Well, that was kind of an oversimplification. Tim had somehow convinced them all that dancing was in their futures, that dancing was inevitable, that going to the Huddersfield Brickwork was destiny. What’s more—it was their destiny for Edmund to drive because he had only had two pints and Tim didn’t want to wait around for a taxi.