Page 2 of So, I Met This Guy . . .

What Dolores doesn’t tell the police is that for the split second he lay at her feet, he flashed her a cute smile. Or that, taken aback by his reaction, instead of whacking him over the head with her empty cocktail glass she stared, momentarily frozen. Then, unable to help herself, smiled back.

But it doesn’t go unnoticed by the two women, even from a distance.

‘Wait! Is he flirting with her?’

‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’

‘I don’t know. Does it? You don’t get many bears on the Pennines.’

And then before you know it, he’s up and off again, disappearing through the crowds.

‘Stop! Security! Surrender immediately!’

The team of security race past them. Crikey, where did they spring from?

‘Don’t worry. He can’t get away. We’re at sea.’

‘He always gets away with it.’

‘Not this time.’

‘That’s what you think.’

Breathless, the two women rush to catch up. As they near the helm of the ship they watch as he races up the staircase and leaps onto the glass railing. A loud gasp goes up from the crowd and a sound from a loudspeaker.

‘Move away from the edge!’

There’s nowhere further to go. Nowhere to run. Finally caught, he turns and looks back at the armed security team, scanning the crowds of passengers, until his eyes fall on the two women. They both stare at him as his gaze flicks from one to the other. A few seconds. A million emotions. Anger. Regret. Triumph. Loss. Heartbreak. Empowerment. Justice.

They reach for each other’s hand, squeezing tightly as armed security move forward to arrest him. This is it. The End. It’s over.

‘Gotcha,’ they mouth, fixing him with their gaze.

But instead of guilt and remorse, he stares back, unrepentant.

And then, with his figure silhouetted against the inky blackness, he turns to look at the wide ocean far below.

And he jumps.

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

A Field in the Middle of Bum-fuck Nowhere

First Impressions

Is this it?

With a juddering halt, an ancient Volkswagen with one hubcap missing and a gaffer-taped bumper pulled up to the five-bar gate at the entrance of the field. It was pouring down. The windscreen wipers creaked back and forth leaving behind a blurry spot right in the middle, causing the driver to hunch down in their seat in order to see out.

Inside the car, Flick checked the directions on her phone again, but the map wouldn’t load. No signal. Leaning forward across the steering wheel, she used the sleeve of her jacket to rub the fogged-up windscreen. The demisters had conked out too. Giving up, she rolled the window a crack to let in some air.

‘Bloody rain,’ she cursed, as a deluge of water followed, soaking her jacket. Hastily she rolled it back up again. It was the middle of July. What had happened to summer?

But Flick already knew the answer. Climate change. She didn’t need to watch another award-winning David Attenborough wildlife documentary to know that everything bad that was happening in the world was the result of climate change. The planet was in crisis. Global warming was wreaking havoc with extreme weather, food scarcity, habitat loss and rising sea levels. It should be headline news, on the front of every newspaper every single day.

Except it wasn’t.

She glanced across at the passenger seat and the latest edition of The Local Echo. Today their leading story was about a headbutting flock of sheep causing mayhem on the moors.