‘The job. The promotion. Don’t take it. You’d hate it, Rob. You know you would.’

Fleet wriggled in his seat. ‘That’s not necessarily—’

‘You would. We both know you would. Tell me honestly,’ Holly pressed, ‘if you had the choice, what would you want to do next?’

Fleet opened his mouth to argue again, to insist that being a yes-man wouldn’t be that bad. But Holly knew him at least as well as he knew himself.

He sighed. ‘Honestly? I’d do what I’m doing now. We could use one or two extra bodies, a few more resources here and there – but I think Roger actually did me a favour when he stuck me in that room with those stacks of files.’

‘You mean you’d want to stay on missing persons?’

Fleet shrugged, as though it weren’t quite so important to him as it felt. ‘The way I see it, they’re only missing for as long as someone’s looking for them. After that, they’re essentially lost. And, well … just recently I’ve come to know what that feels like.’

Now, finally, Holly smiled. ‘So there you go then. Decision made. And if you’re sensible, you’ll cash in some of those Brownie points you’ve earned in exchange for those extra resources.’

Fleet couldn’t help but laugh. It was a release of tension as much as anything, but as quickly as it went away, it began to build again.

‘And … the other thing?’ he said. ‘What about … what about the rest of it, Sprig?’

It was strange: from being so unsure he was doing the right thing, or even if he was entitled to ask, there was suddenly nothing in the world Fleet wanted more than for Holly to let him back in; to give him the chance to show her, not just tell her, how sorry he was.

He leaned forward.

Holly did, too. A tear fell from her eye … and then she smiled again as she took hold of Fleet’s hands.

‘You realise … you realise it wouldn’t be straightforward. Don’t you? I’m not just talking about the baby. There’s … us. And the baby’s father …’

Fleet raised Holly’s hands to his lips. She was right: wherever they went from here, it wouldn’t be easy. But Fleet wasn’t worried. He knew things rarely went according to plan, and that fate had a tendency to pull the rug from beneath your feet. Yet if he’d learned anything recently, it was that the hardest part of life was working out what was most important – and in that moment, it had never felt so simple.

Acknowledgements