‘No problem,’ he replied, unable to stop himself staring at her.
It was her. It had to be.
He’d thought about her a million times since that hot summer’s day more than five years ago. Kicked himself about how it had ended a million times more.
‘Lili?’ he said, less of a question, more of a softly spoken wish. ‘It’s me … Ben.’
She continued to look at him blankly.
Right. Ouch.
Either he was completely wrong, and this wasn’t the woman he’d met in London, or he obviously hadn’t been as memorable to her as she had to him. He studied her face carefully. The bone structure was, well … she and Lili could have been sisters. But her hair was different – a short blonde bob, completely different in colour, cut and style from Lili’s tousled waves. And her voice wasn’t the London accent he’d expected; it was much more polished, like a newsreader on the television.
Okay … Now he was really taking her in, he was starting to second-guess the gut instinct that had forced a name from his lips.
It had happened frequently in the first couple of years after they’d first met. He’d catch a glimpse of someone – in Nepal, or Sydney or Ushuaia – and be sure it was her. It never had been. Just his imagination conjuring up what he wanted to be true. Weird how his brain had played the same trick on him after all this time, when he’d just about managed to forget her.
‘Where’re you staying?’ he asked as they reached the railing at the edge of the small car park right in front of the pier.
‘Staying?’ She looked genuinely surprised.
‘Well, you’re not a local.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a small town,’ he explained. ‘I know most people by sight, if not by reputation, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen you here before.’ He was certain he’d have remembered someone who looked so much like Lili.
Anyway, that didn’t really matter at the moment. He just needed to work out how to get her back to her hotel or whatever,and then he could be on his way, back to building a life in this town, back to where his focus should be at the moment: on Willow. This was just a distraction, his brain’s way of pranking him – tormenting him – with images of the life he’d walked away from. ‘How did you get here?’
‘I think I caught the bus,’ she replied quietly.
‘Youthinkyou did?’
She nodded. ‘I remember sitting over there—’ she pointed to the bench just beside the bus stop ‘—before I walked up the street to the café.’
‘Where had you been heading – Glasgow or Campbelltown?’ There was only one bus service that ran through the town a handful of times each day, so it might help to work out which direction she’d been travelling.
‘I … I don’t know.’
Ben stopped leaning on the railing and stood up. ‘You don’t know?’
She stared back at him helplessly. ‘I’m sure I know … It’s just that I can’t quite seem to pull that information out of my brain at the moment.’
Ben frowned. It was likely the panic attack had left her feeling disoriented, but to forget how you arrived somewhere? That was odd. ‘I think we need to contact someone for you. Are you travelling with family? I don’t think you should be on your own just now.’
‘Yes … Yes, I’d like that.’
‘Where’s your phone?’ He was counting on the fact she might have listed someone as an emergency contact.
The woman shoved her hands in her coat pockets and rummaged around, then tried the back pockets of her jeans.Eventually, she looked back at Ben, confused. ‘I must have lost it.’
‘You don’t have a bag?’ he asked, then realised it was a stupid question. It was obvious she wasn’t carrying one. She must have put it down somewhere in the confusion. ‘Do you know where you left it?’
Her lips began to wobble, but she pressed them into a firm line as her head moved side to side.
‘Wait there for a moment …’ He quickly pulled his own phone out of his pocket and rang Rob back at The Thistle Café and asked whether anything had been handed in or if he’d found a bag left by her table, but no joy.
He looked out over the loch as his brain searched for the next logical course of action. ‘Listen … I think maybe the best thing to do at the moment is call the police, see if they can help you.’
