When they finally reached the top of the hill, Ben led her to a gate at the edge of the summit. A steep slope dropped into the field before levelling off some sixty feet below them, and they had an unobstructed view of west Staffordshire and beyond it the Cheshire Plain. Trees sprouted like tiny heads of broccoli in the distance and small hedges cut the landscape into a crooked chessboard.

‘Beautiful,’ Harri remarked.

‘I’ve always come here alone,’ Ben said. ‘Do you have any family?’

She shook her head. ‘My parents are dead.’

‘I’m sorry. Mine too,’ he replied with a longing so powerful it seemed to close the gap between them. ‘I have friends who have adopted me into their family, but it’s not the same. One day I’d like one of my own. Even if it’s just someone to grow old with.’

There was such sadness about him Harri felt a chill, as though a cloud had passed in front of the sun, but it was still shining brightly, lighting up the magnificent landscape.

Poets often write about love as perfection, but what if it was their flaws that made them such a good fit? Maybe their imperfections made them perfect for each other? Maybe they’d struggled to find love with anyone else because they were only ever meant to find it here in this moment? They were pieces for this puzzle and no other.

‘You’re not alone any more,’ she said. He’d told her they should be honest with each other, and she would never have made herself so vulnerable with anyone else, but their connection felt so real she couldn’t help herself. ‘Neither of us are.’

He nodded, but something in his eyes told her he didn’t believe what she’d said. She wanted to ease his pain, but she didn’t know what else to say, so she pulled him close and they kissed. It was long and passionate, the embodiment of the connection they shared, and she knew he was the man she was meant to be with. They held each other at the top of that hill.

She was right; he was what had been missing from her life.

They were no longer alone. They had each other.

Chapter 8

She remembered that day in the woods and wished she could go back there to a time when everything had seemed so perfect and her life had been full of promise. She’d felt such love for Ben. She still did, but now it was tinged with the pain of rejection. He’d come back into her life in the most unexpected way, and she had entered his world on a quest for answers. They didn’t have a future together, that much was clear, but in solving the mystery of what happened to David and Elizabeth Asha, Harri might learn why the man she’d fallen in love with had spurned her so coldly.

She felt as though she had stepped into a science fiction film. She was standing in an observation area just off a corridor that bisected one of the buildings in Keele University Science Park. Angelika, a willowy PhD student, was beside her, and they watched what was happening on the other side of a long window that took up most of one wall. Beyond it, an Arabic man in his late twenties was waving his hand through the air as though he was doing t’ai chi, but his movements were about more than spiritual form and martial discipline. He wore a thick black glove covered in what looked like tiny solar panels. The glove was linked to a sophisticated projector, and allowed him to wirelessly manipulate a realistic hologram of an intricate machine about the size of a small car.