CHAPTER ONE

      ‘THANK YOU for coming in. I’ll be in touch.’ Georgia closed the door firmly behind the latest applicant for the post of senior photographer on the Askerby and District Gazette and let the bright, polite smile drop from her face.

      Mentally she began to compose a letter for Rose to type up and send to all five of the hopefuls who had responded to the advertisement.

      Dear X, Thank you so much for coming in and wasting my time today. While admiring your nerve in applying for a job for which you have no experience and absolutely no talent, I am afraid that I am unable to offer you the post. I am desperate for a photographer, but not that desperate. Yours sincerely, Georgia Maitland, Editor.

      What a shame you couldn’t tell it how it was, instead of wrapping it in meaningless phrases, thought Georgia, already resigned to drafting a letter that would make her sound kind and encouraging instead of cross and impatient, which was how she really felt.

      As if she didn’t have enough to do.

      Taking off her glasses, she dropped them on to her desk and threw herself into the battered executive chair with a gusty sigh, spinning round to face the window behind. The view over the rooftops of the town to the hills beyond was one of the few bonuses of the Gazette’s location on the third floor of a bleak Victorian warehouse which had been badly converted in the Seventies.

      On this March afternoon, a weak winter sun was struggling to stay above the horizon and the hills, still dusted with snow from a cold snap earlier in the week, were reflecting a pinkish glow. It would make a nice picture, thought Georgia morosely.

      If only she could find a photographer capable of taking it.

      Behind her, she heard the door to her office open. This would be Rose, still struggling to learn the ropes as the Gazette’s secretary, and almost as anxious as Georgia to find a new photographer. She would be wanting to know how the last interview had gone.

      ‘He seems terribly nice,’ she had whispered to Georgia confidentially before ushering the last candidate in.

      Nice he might have been, a talented photographer he most certainly wasn’t.

      ‘Please tell me that guy wasn’t the best photographer Askerby can come up with,’ Georgia said without turning round.

      ‘I could tell you that if you want, but then I’d be lying, and you know I’ve never lied to you, Georgia.’

      The voice that answered her was far from her secretary’s cut-glass tones. Instead it was warm and amused, with a Scottish lilt that was more a softening of the hard edges than a full-blown accent.

      It was a voice Georgia hadn’t heard for four long years. A voice so unexpected and so bizarrely out of place in her dull provincial office that she froze for a moment, certain that she must be imagining things.

      Then, very, very slowly, she swivelled her chair round to face her husband.

      ‘Hello, Georgia,’ he said.

      Georgia’s heart, which had lurched into her throat at the sound of his voice, did a series of spectacular somersaults before landing with a sickening thud that left her reeling and breathless.