But as it happened, I finally bumped into Matt the very next day. I was outside the newsagent’s, trying to persuade the little dog I was now looking after to wait nicely, with her lead fastened to the metal ring that was fitted to the shop wall for that purpose, while I popped in to buy a paper. Trixie, who was a sweet but quite feisty spaniel-terrier cross, wasn’t having any of it. As soon as she realised she’d been tethered, she let rip with a barrage of complaint, first barking and then beginning to howl.
‘That’s what happens when you try to leave someone,’ said a familiar voice behind me. I stopped, my hand still on Trixie’s head where I’d been stroking her to try to calm her down. ‘They howl with misery.’
For a moment I fought with the urge to turn round and throw myself into his arms. I’d missed him so much, longed so much for the moment when I might see him again. But then my disappointment with him came to the forefront. Why hadn’t he sought me out to try to patch things up? Did he really not want anything to do with me, now he knew who I was? Was that how little he cared about me?
‘I didn’t leave you,’ I pointed out without turning round.
‘Well, theoretically you did,’ he said mildly. There was a smile in his voice. ‘Emma left me, and out of the blue this bird called Candice turned up.’
At this, I swung round to face him.
‘I’m not Candice!’ I said, so vehemently that Trixie started whimpering and a lady passing by in the street nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘I’m not that person any more. I never was, not really – I was just putting on an act.’
‘OK.’ He was speaking gently now, the smile gone, his eyes looking into mine. ‘I believe you. I do. And like I said in my messages, I’m sorry for walking away, but it was a shock—’
‘Messages? What messages?’
He frowned. ‘You didn’t get them? Are you serious? But I texted you the very next morning. And then I emailed you – twice. When you didn’t reply, I assumed you didn’t want any more to do with me, after the way I reacted. I thought about coming to see you, but I didn’t want to behave like a stalker—’
‘Nor did I! I wanted to come and see you, but I thought, if you needed more time to come to terms with it, or if you … just didn’t want to see me any more …’ I tailed off and looked down at the ground, ‘I’d just have to accept it.’
‘But, Emma, I wouldn’t do that. It was a shock, yes, finding out you weren’t who you said you were. I was hurt that you didn’t confide in me, and I suppose I felt a bit stupid. But it didn’t change how I feel about you. I said all that in my messages.’
‘Oh.’ So he did still want to see me? ‘I’m sorry. I thought I’d told you, we’ve got a lousy phone signal at home. And the internet’s just as bad.’
‘Don’t you check your phone for messages when you’re in town? Or use your mobile data to pick up your emails? What sort of a celebrity are you?’
I glanced at him, cross again for a minute, but I could see he was teasing. And I deserved it.
‘No, I don’t check very often. It suits me to be out of touch, these days, and anyway I don’t usually get many messages.’ I sighed. ‘I’ve just got out of the habit of looking at my phone much at all, since I left the States. I didn’t have any friends over there. Not real friends. My sister texts me occasionally, but … well, she’s busy. And my family are better off without me in their lives.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ he said, looking at me sadly.
‘Oh, it is. I upset everyone by coming home, and ruined their Christmas. The paparazzi swarmed round the house. We had to sit with the curtains drawn and all the phones off, whispering to each other. And now someone’s found out about me, I suppose it’s going to happen all over again here in Crickleford.’
‘It might happen eventually, I suppose. But not yet.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t know how you can say that. I mean … well, maybe you won’t say anything, or write anything, but—’
‘Of course I won’t!’ He paused and glanced at Trixie, who was now whining constantly to be set free. ‘Look, were you on an urgent mission to get something from the shop here? I could hold onto the dog while you go in. Otherwise, shall we take a stroll, and I’ll explain what I’ve been doing while I was waiting for you to reply to my messages.’
I laughed. ‘OK. Trixie would appreciate the walk, I’m sure. I was only going to get a paper. To check … you know. I’ve been checking every day whether they’ve found out where I am.’
‘Well, so have I,’ he said matter-of-factly as I unclipped Trixie from the shop wall and we started to walk down towards the river. ‘And not just in the papers.’ He smiled at my puzzled expression. ‘I’ll explain as we walk.’
It was raining again, but we both had cagoules on and, to be honest, I was so happy to be in Matt’s company once more, I don’t think I’d have cared if it had hailed, snowed and thundered. Trixie calmed down as soon as I gave her the length of her lead and she could run ahead of us, sniffing into the undergrowth and stopping from time to time to investigate other dogs’ scents. Then she trotted on again, her tail wagging with excitement, her ears erect with the expectation of more interesting smells around the next corner.
‘She’s cute,’ Matt said. ‘Whose is she?’
‘Oh, she belongs to Mr and Mrs Barton. They live in that house there, right on the riverbank,’ I said, pointing it out to him.
We both stood in silence, staring at it. Although I’d been there in the house, looking after Trixie, for a few days now, I hadn’t actually seen it from this angle before. The river was literally lapping at its walls.
‘I didn’t realise it was quite so close to the river,’ I said.
‘It isn’t, normally. The river’s as high as I’ve ever seen it. Haven’t you heard everyone around here talking about it? They’re really worried it’s going to burst its banks. It’s only happened once before, in my lifetime anyway, but we’ve had so much rain …’ He shook his head. ‘If it carries on like this, I think we could be in trouble, seriously.’
Sure enough, looking at the riverbank now I could see what he meant. Some of the houses nearest the river already had sandbags against their doors. I gazed around me, trying to gauge the impact it could have if the river did overflow its banks.
‘This part of town could all end up underwater, couldn’t it?’ I said quietly. ‘Should I have sandbags for the Bartons’ house?’
‘Yes, probably, as a precaution anyway.’ He glanced again at the house, and added, ‘I’ll get you some for their doors. And if it becomes necessary, I’ll help you move as much as possible upstairs.’
I wondered if I ought to try to contact them. They were a nice couple who’d just retired, and were celebrating with a holiday of a lifetime in Australia. It would be awful to worry them if it turned out to be unnecessary, and even worse if they felt they ought to interrupt their holiday and come rushing home.
‘Wait for a few more days,’ Matt advised, ‘and we’ll see whether the water level’s starting to go down.’
I loved that he was saying we. I instinctively tucked my free arm through his, and then started to worry that I might be assuming too much. But he smiled down at me and squeezed my hand.
‘So: tell me,’ I said as we strolled on through the rain. ‘What did you mean when you said you were checking, but not just in the papers?’
‘Well, there’s no point being a journalist if you can’t use your contacts, is there?’ He laughed. ‘It was easy enough to pretend I was interested in doing a follow-up on the whole “Where is Candice Nightingale?” story. You know, poor little unknown hack working on a minor Devon newspaper that nobody in Fleet Street’s even heard of – desperate to get his big break by fair means or foul—’ He stopped, giving me an ironic little smile. ‘Which isn’t far from the truth. Apart from the fact that, in this instance, I can’t actually do it.’ He squeezed my hand again. ‘My heart won’t let me.’
My own heart skipped a beat at this. Did he mean it? Could I believe him? I so much wanted to trust him. Surely, if he’d been going to betray me, he’d have done it by now?
‘So who are they? Your contacts?’ I said.
‘People working on the nationals. Some I knew from uni. Others I met down here in the West Country, and they’ve since moved on to better jobs in London. Some I’ve spoken to in the past about various stories. I managed to find at least one contact on every national paper.’ He turned to smile at me now. There was rain dripping off his hood onto his nose, running down his cheeks so that he looked as if he was crying. ‘Nobody has heard anything yet, Emma. If anyone here in Crickleford had spread the word, these guys would have got hold of it by now, trust me. Your trail’s gone cold.’
When I hugged him, the rain from his cagoule dripped over my face.
‘Thank you,’ I breathed. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief that is.’
‘You’re welcome. And the more time that goes by without anyone from the national press finding you, the less interesting the story will be. You’ll be old news.’
There was a time, back when Shane made his first recording, when I actually longed for fame. Now, being old news sounded like a dream come true. What Matt had done for me – not only passing up the chance of writing my story himself, but also talking to all those contacts on the national press, without revealing what he knew – was surely proof in itself that I could trust him. He didn’t hate me for my deception. We were still friends. But was that all we were? It had been me, after all, who’d said I didn’t want a relationship with him. And even though, in a fit of panic when I thought I was losing him after the revelation about my identity, I’d told him I loved him, how could I blame him if he didn’t want to risk being hurt or rejected by me again? Rather than risk embarrassing or upsetting either of us, I decided to make do, for now, with just enjoying his company again.
We walked on, neither of us speaking for a while. And just as I was thinking that poor Trixie looked more like a drowned rat than a dog, and I ought to be getting her home, Matt suddenly turned to me and said:
‘I should be apologising to you, anyway. I haven’t been fair to you. I got all upset and self-righteous about you not telling me the truth about yourself, but I’ve kept stuff about myself back from you as well. The thing is, it’s hard for me to talk about it. Most people around here don’t realise who I am, either.’
I looked at him through the pouring rain. His lovely, warm brown eyes were gazing into mine, his expression apologetic.
‘What?’ I said. ‘Are you really someone famous as well? Who? Don’t tell me – Ed Sheeran? Have you coloured your hair too?’
He laughed softly. ‘No. Nothing like that. I can’t compete with your fame. I was born Matteo Sorrentino.’
‘Oh. I presumed Matt was short for Matthew. But, of course, your father’s Italian.’
‘Yes. And the thing is, most people around here don’t realise I’m the little boy who used to come and stay here in Crickleford every summer with my grandparents. They were my mum’s parents, so their surname was different, you see. My parents split up when I was just a baby, and my dad went back to Italy.’ He sighed. ‘I never knew him, and I don’t want to. He walked out on my mum and that was enough for me. Mum and I lived in Plymouth, and life was hard for her. She had to work long hours to support us both. But eventually she got together with this new guy, Jim, who frankly wasn’t interested in me. So I used to spend every school holiday here in Crickleford with Nan and Grandad, as well as a lot of weekends. I was …’
He swallowed a couple of times and shook his head, struggling to go on. I took hold of his hand and held it tight. ‘I was very close to them,’ he said eventually. ‘I just lived for my holidays here in Crickleford. But as I grew up, I came less often. My own life took over – you know how it is with teenagers. I went away to uni, then I got my first job, on the Plymouth Daily News. Mum was too involved with Jim – he’s my stepdad now – to occupy herself very much with her own parents. And I … I just didn’t keep in touch with them as much as I should’ve done. I kept thinking there’d be plenty of time left. And as it turned out there wasn’t.’
‘They both died around the same time?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Together, actually. In an accident. They were crossing Fore Street from behind a parked van. Hand in hand. A motorbike came out of nowhere and knocked them both flying. They died at the scene, still holding hands.’ He took a deep breath and swallowed again before going on. ‘That should have been a comfort to me, the fact that they died together, but I just couldn’t … still can’t, really … get the horror of it out of my mind. The pictures in my head, of the accident, never leave me, whether I’m awake or asleep. It haunts me. They left Bilberry Cottage to me because they knew I loved it so much. It used to be home to me, my second home. But after they’d gone, I couldn’t bear going inside.’
‘I’m not surprised. That’s awful, Matt – so sad. But they wanted you to have it!’
‘I know. And I owed it to them to come back here to Crickleford and sort it out. It was a bit neglected – they were old, after all. They’d let it get shabby and run down. The kitchen and bathroom were old-fashioned, the décor was dated, the paintwork was peeling and the carpets, well, they were thin and worn. I got the job on the Chronicle here, but I knew the only way I could cope with living in the cottage would be to change it completely first. I had everything ripped out and started making it into a completely different place.’
‘Yes. I can understand that.’ I nodded. ‘And I’m sure your grandparents would have understood, too.’ I wanted to add that I’d love to see what he’d done to the interior of the cottage, to tell him how much I’d always loved it from the outside, but obviously it wasn’t the right time. ‘I’m glad you’ve been able to tell me about them, Matt.’
‘I think it’s helped me, talking to you about it,’ he replied quietly. ‘It … just feels right, somehow, sharing it with you.’
I thought about hugging him again, but we were both dripping rain from everywhere by now and the result would probably have drowned us both. Trixie broke the moment by shaking herself thoroughly, rainwater flying in every direction.
‘I’d better take her home,’ I said, and we turned to walk back into town. I gave Matt a quick kiss on the cheek as we said goodbye.
‘I’ll bring some sandbags round to the Bartons’ house later, OK?’ he said. ‘And I’ll be watching the river level, but call me if you need my help. You know, using that strange new-fangled invention you seem to have forgotten about – the mobile phone?’
I was laughing to myself as I took Trixie back indoors. It was good to feel happy again, good to know that there didn’t seem to be any paparazzi after me yet, and even better to know Matt was OK with me. But when I looked out of the back window of the Bartons’ house, I felt a tremor of anxiety, watching the river water lapping at the banks. I gave Trixie a warm bath and rubbed her dry, enjoying the little dog’s woofs of pleasure, then dried myself off and changed into the spare clothes I now always brought with me on any canine assignments. A couple of hours later Matt returned with the sandbags, as promised, and showed me how to pile them against the Bartons’ doors when I left for the evening.
‘It’s stopped raining for now,’ he said, looking up at the sky. ‘So keep your fingers crossed.’
As I walked home in the twilight, I noticed that several other people living in this area near the river were also outside putting sandbags up against their houses. They nodded to me as I walked past.
‘Can’t be too careful,’ one man said, shaking his head ruefully. ‘It’s fifty-fifty now whether she goes back down or whether she bursts her banks. A couple of dry days and we’ll be all right. Otherwise, we’re stuffed.’
I shivered with anxiety again. I really didn’t like the idea of trying to move all the Bartons’ furniture upstairs, even with Matt’s help. But if that was what was needed, that was what we’d have to do.