The clinic was like an old hotel, designed to make people believe they were anywhere but a medical facility. It was all polished brass doorknobs, oversize chairs and fresh flowers in cut glass vases. But the people in wheelchairs, or with tubes attached to various parts of their anatomy, draped in such a way as ordinary folk accessorize with a necklace, made it apparent this wasn’t a holiday retreat.

Emily hadn’t been back for well over ten years, during which time subtle changes had been made: a sound system had been installed, there was new carpet on the stairs, and a grand piano by the French doors that opened onto the garden. But the security cameras remained, there to make sure you were safe and sound in the rehabilitation clinic dressed up as a country lodge.

She was asked to wait, to sit in the reception area just like any other guest. Absently flicking through magazines with pictures of strangers smiling back, not taking in any of the articles about the benefits of acupuncture or aromatherapy baths. She couldn’t focus because of the smell that was permeating from the kitchen that she knew was down the hall and off to the right. Roasting meat and cinnamon, all mixed in together, along with antiseptic and furniture polish.

It transported her back to a time when she was so very angry with the world, with herself, because she’d survived. A time when she couldn’t hold on to any happy memories. When she kept asking to go home, then realized there was no point because her parents were gone. Her room, her things, her life, had all been destroyed by the knowledge that she would never get to enjoy them again. Her school, her friends, everything, gone, changed, ruined, never to be the same again.

No one looked at her the same way, or spoke to her, or paid her the same amount of attention, because she was damaged and bruised and was just someone to pity. Not a person, not a child, just a body in a wheelchair that everyone was trying to fix. But they never understood she didn’t want to be fixed, she wanted to be gone.

“Emily?” Emily was pulled back to where a woman stood before her, a smile on her face and concern in her eyes.

It was the same woman who had treated her, here, when the hospital in England could do no more. When her grandmother decided to take her away from all the people, all the memories, of her life before the accident, deciding to bring her to a clinic where her friend was training as a psychiatrist. A woman whom Catriona first met in Paris but had never told Emily the connection, instead waiting until she herself was gone before revealing the truth about all those people, all those lives that dipped and weaved through one another.

“My goodness, aren’t you just the most wonderful surprise?” Beth pulled Emily into an embrace, and she relaxed into the older woman’s arms, breathed in the familiar scent of her, felt a sense of peace settle in her heart.