Happiness comes from within. You’ve heard that one, right? But it doesn’t come from within. It is the within. If you let go of desire and regret (for what is regret but the desire to undo the past?), you will realize you have everything you need. There is no gap in your life. Once you accept that reality, you can find peace, contentment and a happiness more profound and lasting than anything you’ve ever experienced. End the quest for transient elation. Unlock the happiness within.

I want.

The words were scrawled in the margin in red ink. Harri noticed a couple of scribbles above them where it looked as though someone had tried to get a pen to work. She was a little annoyed to be reminded it was a used book and that someone else had read it before her. She’d been lost in Isabella Tosetti’s words, and the knowledge another reader had got them first seemed to somehow diminish their significance. They’d been striking a chord with her, particularly the section about being love-struck. That’s certainly how she’d felt the first time she’d met Ben. She absently turned the page and felt a sudden chill when she registered the handwritten words in the margin overleaf.

I want to live

Help

He’s trying to kill me

Chapter 3

Harri hadn’t been able to concentrate after finding the message. She hadn’t been able to sleep much either. The words could have been a cruel prank, but something about them touched her finely honed instincts as a detective. There were the scribbles of someone trying to get a pen to work, and the message itself was simple and to the point. There were no dramatic flourishes, just a clear plea for help. She kept picking up the book to examine it. She hadn’t found any more writing, but there had been a ‘Leek Library Released for Sale’ stamp on the endpaper. Finally, as the first grey light of dawn edged the curtains, Harri drifted into a fitful sleep and dreamed of the last life she’d failed to save.

Alan Munro.

The man who had cost her almost everything.

She was tormented by the desire to undo those last few moments. To reach out to him, to call to him. But just as in real life, she was too slow, and it felt as though she was pinned to the rocks beneath her knees. The light of impending doom blazed in her dream, so brightly it woke her with a start.

She sighed, wondering if the dreams would ever stop. Would the guilt?

She rubbed her eyes, got dressed and drove her old Volkswagen Golf into Leek.

She hadn’t been to the library for years. Her mum used to take her every week as a youngster, and she’d grown to love reading. She remembered on her very first visit she’d explored the shelves tentatively, like a burglar prowling through a stranger’s house.

How can all these books be free? she’d thought, but she’d quickly become acclimatized and treated the cornucopia of stories as her second home.