‘We have strict safeguards here,’ she replied. ‘We would never allow our employees to be exposed to—’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Who are you really working for, Ms Kealty?’ Dr Abiola asked, stepping back. ‘I don’t think I can talk to you any more. Not without a lawyer present.’

She turned and walked away briskly.

Harri called after her, but the academic didn’t respond, and went inside the nearest building.

Another fail, Harri thought, before she headed for the car park.

She replayed their conversation and tried to understand why Dr Abiola would have reacted so strongly to the suggestion Beth Asha might have been exposed to a toxin. Was she worried about the university’s reputation? Or was she covering up something?

When she reached her car, Harri saw something fluttering on the windscreen. She grabbed it and was going to toss it away without reading it, but none of the other cars had flyers and the moment she touched the scrap of paper she felt as though she was being watched. She glanced round and saw Ben Elmys standing in the trees at the edge of the car park.

‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘What are you doing?’

He froze for a moment, but found his legs when she started running towards him. By the time she reached the treeline, he was gone, swallowed by the thick woodland that surrounded the campus. Harri checked some of the paths through the trees, but there was no sign of him.

As she headed back to her car, she realized she was still holding the flyer. She smoothed out the scrunched-up piece of paper and read the typescript.

An edge

Shaving moments

To curl and wither

Doomed to decay

In flawed minds

What is

What was

And what will be

All lost

The misremembered lyrics

Of a once cherished song

Harri glanced back at the woods, conflicted. The poetry was beautiful, and it reminded her of their first date when he’d quoted Maya Angelou and they’d shared their love of the form, but the circumstances of this piece made it unsettling. Had he always been otherworldly? That was the polite way Dr Abiola had put it, but she hadn’t been spurned by him. Harri wondered whether she’d been blinded by the love hormones Isabella Tosetti’s book had talked about. Or had something happened to Ben to change him?

‘Just talk to me!’ she shouted at the trees. ‘Don’t leave me notes.’

There was no reply. Simply leaves fluttering in the wind.

Harri shivered as she got into her car.

This wasn’t the first time he’d messed with her mind.

Chapter 10

Twelve months earlier, Harri steered her Golf into the car park at the Hand and Trumpet for her third date with Ben. She felt the faintest breath of autumn as she stepped outside, but the September sun kept the chill at bay.

Children scampered around a large pond in the centre of a freshly trimmed lawn, and the scent of cut grass mingled with the fragrance from flowers hung in baskets bursting with bright colour. A terrace outside the pub buzzed with chatter, and every table was occupied.