The man spits to one side. And then he stops, about twenty yards away, his back still to Jake, and looks around him, as if taking in the forest for the first time, the still summer air. A shiver runs through Jake. Has he pushed him too far? The man pulls out a cigarette, lights it with a rasping strike of a match, and walks on.

It’s a sound that Jake has heard before.

27

Kate

Kate stares at the phone screen, watching it power down to darkness. She can’t go on like this. Her paranoia is killing her. She’s fine when she’s just talking to Rob. It’s when she sees his face that this feeling kicks in, a sickening, gut-wrenching sense that it’s not him but someone who looks identical.

A moment later, Rob starts to call her on FaceTime on her laptop. She snaps it shut, looking around the kitchen. Shit. The landline in the hall. She rushes out and pulls the handset cable from the wall socket. There’s no other way for him to communicate with her now. The house is isolated. She feels better already.

Bex is still asleep. Kate walks down the corridor towards the guest room and stands outside the door. She can’t wake her again. Not after last night’s drama. Bex would never forgive her. Instead, she opens Rob’s office door, pleased that he’s still been unable to lock it remotely, and steps inside, followed by Stretch, who’s come to see what she’s doing.

She’s not sure herself. She just wants to get a better sense of the Rob she doesn’t know so well, the man he was before she met him. She walks over to his desk, picks up the Rossetti and stares at it again, the frightened faces. How They Met Themselves, as she now knows it’s called.

‘What’s this place?’

Kate spins round to see Bex in her pyjamas, standing bleary eyed in the doorway.

‘Rob’s office,’ she says.

‘His Cornish man-cave?’

‘Did you sleep well?’ Kate asks, ignoring the comment out of some strange sense of loyalty. She said something similar once to Rob and he didn’t find it funny.

‘Good, thanks. Apart from being woken up in the middle of the night by this crazy best friend of mine who doesn’t realise how bloody lucky she is.’ She bends down to pet Stretch, who is at her feet, tail wagging like a demented windscreen wiper.

Kate smiles at her. Where would she be without Bex? ‘Sorry about that.’ She pauses, her smile fading. ‘I’ve just spoken to Rob. Asked about him talking in fluent French on the TV.’

‘And?’ Bex asks, looking up at her.

‘He says they got him to practise it for the cameras.’