Suddenly my knees felt weak, and I lowered myself on to the bed as a new thought occurred to me. What if that tick at the top of the page wasn’t a tick at all? What if it was actually a letter? The letter J ... for Josh.
I dropped the piece of paper as though it had scorched my fingers.
‘I want you to find Josh and fix things with him,’Adam had said to me in his final hours. He’d made me promise that I would locate my former friend and‘Listen to what he has to say.’But even while he’d been extracting that promise from me, Adam must have suspected that I wouldn’t try too hard to find him. Was that why he’d left me this clue in a place I was sure to find it when I went through his things?
‘It would have been easier if you’d just written his contact details on our kitchen whiteboard, hon,’ I said, closing my eyes and visualising the jotter beside the fridge, where Adam’s scrawled reminder that we were out of coffee had sat for the last fourteen months.
With a heavy sigh I reached again for my laptop and typed in the website address for Wildwood Furniture. The site was infuriatingly vague. There was no address, no showroom to visit or owner’s name. There wasn’t even a mobile phone number to call. Who would run a business with such sketchy contact details? Maybe someone who didn’t want to be found.
My brow furrowed as I read through the web page for a fourth time. I had no interest in buying one of the ‘handcrafted bespoke items’ that had been created in a ‘remote forest workshop’, butthere was something about the phraseology that sounded vaguely familiar. Was I putting two and two together and coming up with a number more improbable than four? But somehow I didn’t think I was wrong. Finding this clue to Josh’s whereabouts – if that’s what it was – felt like serendipity. As though Adam had purposefully led me to this point.I guess you really do want me to go through with this, I thought with resignation as I clicked on the Contact Us link.
I couldn’t remember Josh ever expressing a desire to be a furniture maker, but hehadalways been creative and was forever carving something out of wood with that old penknife of his. I could still recall the rough cuts on his fingers whenever he’d take my hand to help me climb on to our treetop platform. Working with wood calmed him down, made him less restless, he used to say. Did it still?
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ I murmured as I keyed my email address into the box on the screen. My fingers hesitated for a moment before finally beginning to type.
Josh, I realise I’m probably the last person you ever wanted or expected to hear from again, but I really need to speak to you. Lily.
Chapter Seven
The sweep of the wipers across the windscreen sounded grainy. There was no denying that the rain, which had turned to sleet after I set off, had now mutated to snow. I cast a worried look at Fletcher on the back seat, who was pacing between the windows, steaming up the glass with his breath.
‘Sit down, boy,’ I said, automatically tightening my grip on the steering wheel as I felt the tyres begin to slip on the tarmac.
I should have listened to the weather reports. But I’d been in such a hurry to check out of the B&B and get on the road that I hadn’t even thought to check. It didn’t help hearing the radio announcer confirm that the Met Office was advising drivers north of the border to ‘only venture out if their journey is absolutely necessary’.
‘Itisnecessary,’ I said, my words ricocheting around the warm interior of the car like a challenge. ‘In fact, it’s vital. I have a promise I need to keep.’
I’d sent three messages to Wildwood Furniture, but none had been answered. Of course, not every small business checked their inbox regularly, and itwasthe weekend after all, but once the suspicionthat I was being ghosted got stuck in my head it was hard to shake off. Theywerebeing read and deliberately ignored. And if they’d never heard of anyone called Josh Metcalf, why not message back and let me know?
However badly things had ended between us, Josh and I had enjoyedyearsof friendship before we’d argued ... as well as a couple of moments when things had almost spilt over into something more. If he was ghosting me now, when I was clearly anxious to speak to him, it was proof those old wounds hadn’t healed at all.
Hours later, as I’d teetered on the edge of sleep, I’d realised there was a simpler way to find out if Josh owned Wildwood Furniture. The idea catapulted me upright in bed and had me once again reaching for my laptop.
I might still be barking up the wrong tree, I thought, smiling at my own pun as I keyed the business name into the search box on the Companies House website, where information on every business registered in the UK was lodged. Wildwood Furniture popped up straight away. I grinned in triumph as I clicked on the People tab and the name of the man who seemed determined to ignore me appeared on my computer screen. Josh Metcalf was the sole officer of the company, but more interestingly, it gave his address.
The plan came to me at two a.m. and I tussled with it for a while, but by six o’clock my mind was made up. Josh’s business was based in Scotland, and from the maps I’d been following all day, he was only a few hours’ drive from where I was staying. I’m sure somewhere Logical Me was screaming out all the reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this, but for once I tuned her out. There was a reason Fate had conspired to place me practically on Josh’s doorstep after all these years.
Yesterday’s motorway journey had been long and boring, but today as my phone directed me off the well-gritted surfaces of the major routes and on to lesser-travelled roads, I found myself missing the comfort of surrounding traffic – I even missed the continual spray of passing lorries.
‘You can do this. You like driving,’ I reminded myself as I turned my car towards an even more remote area on the map. It had been over an hour since I’d seen another vehicle, and the roads had grown narrower and more twisty.
Why Josh had moved to Scotland was a mystery, and living so far off the beaten track, he probably had to drive for miles to see another human being. This is exactly what teenage Josh had done whenever he was hurt or in pain; he’d cut himself off from everyone. It had taken the love and patience of a caring foster family, and maybe, just maybe, the friendship of a young girl who lived next door, to make him whole again.
Had what happened between Josh and me six years ago been a factor in his decision to live like a recluse? I shivered at the wheel, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside the car, which my dashboard now informed me was below zero.
As the driving conditions continued to worsen, my confidence began to waver. A couple of minor skids had really scared me, but I didn’t lose control; the tyres on my car were too new and expensive to let that happen. I sent up a silent thank you to Adam, because the promise I’d made him had kept me safe. I only hoped every promise he’d extracted from me turned out to be such a good idea.
The journey was taking longer than anticipated, and I bit my lip worriedly every time extra minutes were added to my expected arrival. I’d booked an Airbnb for Fletcher and me to stay in that night, in a village over an hour’s drive from Wildwood Furniture, which had been the closest place I could find.
I peered through the windscreen at the grey, snow-heavy sky. I realised dusk would fall hard and fast here, and the thought of travelling these slippery roads in total darkness was beginning to scare me.
I briefly considered turning back, before realising with a sigh that continuing was my best option at this point. I’d made a commitment, not only to Adam but also to myself.
My eyes were tired from continually darting between the map on my phone screen and the mesmerising fall of snowflakes which the wind was whipping into horizontal flurries. Phone signal in this area was clearly patchy, because mine had dropped out a few times. I added panic at being lost in the middle of nowhere to the list of things I now needed to worry about.
Finally, my phone chirped up with an instruction to turn right in fifty metres. I slowed the car to a crawl and saw a gap in the hedgerow. Beside it was a small signpost, almost obliterated by snow-laden foliage, confirming this was ‘Private Woodland’ and adding ‘No Entry’ for good measure.
‘Not exactly welcoming, Josh,’ I muttered as I pulled hard on the wheel to make the turn. The car bumped and jerked in protest on to the unpaved road. Around me the forest was dense and tall, but at least it shielded me from some of the falling snow. The lane twisted and turned in hairpin bends, and when I glanced at my phone the map had gone and the screen was terrifyingly blank. All I could do was keep following the unmade road and hope I was still heading in the right direction.
