The flight to England was one of the more unpleasant ones I'd taken. Okay, I'll admit I'd been spoiled over the past few years, first with business class and then my own jet, but that was only so I could deal with my never-ending stream of calls and emails. On the other hand, I'd also taken military transport in some of the shittiest countries in the world, and half of those planes didn't even have seats, let alone trolley service.
So when I say it was bad, that meant the flight sucked.
When I booked my ticket, the only seat left was in the middle of a row of three, near the back. I spent the eight-hour flight wedged between a snoring salesman with a body odour problem and a stomach the size of the national debt, and a teenager who only stopped playing computer games long enough to throw up into a paper bag.
"Don't worry," he told me, after he'd puked for the third time. "It happens every time I fly."
Well, if it always happens, I've got a suggestion—don't eat a super-sized McDonald's in the departure lounge right before you get on the bloody plane. I'd seen him doing exactly that.
Between that pair, the toddler behind me who reckoned he was the new David Beckham, and the bachelor party in front that managed to drink the plane dry of vodka before we got halfway over the Atlantic, I'd had enough. I was seriously regretting not stuffing my gun into a diplomatic pouch and bringing it along.
By the time we landed, the entire cast of Riverdance was holding a rehearsal in my head. As I only had hand luggage, I avoided the crush at the baggage carousel and half crawled, half sleepwalked over to the railway station to catch the Heathrow Express into West London. Morning or not, all I wanted to do was sleep, so I checked into some dive of a hotel on a backstreet in Bayswater.
I slept for most of the day, but not well. Six times, the headboard in the next room banging against the adjoining wall woke me, accompanied by the wild cries of a woman faking an orgasm. Yes, all through the morning and early afternoon. It takes a special kind of desperate to pop out for a quick fuck along with your coffee and McMuffin, but I guess there's a market for everything.
Finding a hotel that didn't rent its rooms out by the hour jumped to the top of my to-do list.
By evening, I'd found a room smaller than my closet at home, having forked out an obscene amount of money for the privilege. At least I'd had lunch and stocked up on painkillers for my headache, as well as shopping for the essentials.
I spent the evening dying my hair, and also my eyebrows, careful not to use so much dye I ended up looking like Bert from Sesame Street. Once I was nice and mousey, I chopped the front bit into a fringe and checked myself out in the mirror. I looked bloody awful. Perfect.
Before I drifted off to sleep, I considered my options. Staying in London long term wasn't one of them—I knew too many people, plus there was CCTV everywhere. It would only be a matter of time before I ran into someone who recognised me.
I'd spent my life cultivating a long list of contacts. There was a standing joke among my friends that I could be out walking in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and a local tribesman would appear from behind a tree saying, "Hey, how are you? Long time no see!" Usually my number of acquaintances was useful, but now I found it a hindrance.
So, if not London, where should I go?
Europe brought the risk of another border crossing, and there would be too many people looking for me—my own team and fuck knew who else? That left the rest of the UK.
After I'd slept on it, I decided heading to the countryside would be my best plan. I'd find somewhere to hole up for a few weeks until my mind consented to shake hands with logic again.
Old me had a plan for everything. And a spare plan. And an alternate plan for the spare plan. And a backup plan for that. New me couldn't decide between cereal and toast for breakfast. Someone had sucked my brain out through my nose and replaced it with termites.
Without a driver's licence in my new name, the best plan I could come up with was "get on a train." Sure, I could have stolen a car, but in my current frame of mind, I'd probably screw it up, and I was too tired for a police chase today.
Guilt nibbled away at me as I shoved my belongings into my bag. How were the people I'd left behind feeling? Angry? Exasperated? Disappointed in me?
Probably all of the above.
I was a coward for running, so I deserved their contempt. I didn't know how else to cope, though. At work, I was used to confrontation, but in my personal life, I shied away from uncomfortable situations.
I only hoped my friends would forgive me when I went back home.
In the meantime, there I was. Ashlyn Emily Hale. Thirty-two years old on my passport, twenty-nine in reality. I had no home, no job, no qualifications, no friends, and not much money. I'd been in worse positions, but for the last decade and a half, I'd had my husband to support me through them. Now I was on my own, and it brought back stark reminders of a childhood I'd spent my life trying to block out.
An hour later, I sat on a train chugging out of Paddington station. At first, I couldn't decide whether to head north or west, so I'd flipped a grubby penny, and west it was. My husband had been the one who carefully evaluated every decision, weighing up the pros and cons. Without him, I was reduced to heads or tails.
As it was a Saturday, I'd hoped the trains would be less crowded, but the one I ended up on was almost as bad as the plane. It was a stopping service, and drunken revellers returning from what appeared to have been an all-night office Christmas party filled the carriage. It was only the end of November, for crying out loud, but they'd started the festive season early. I guess they didn't want to waste any precious drinking time.
By the time we reached Slough station, I'd been serenaded by a group of elves, had a drink spilled on me by a reindeer, and gotten my arse groped by Father Christmas. Normally, I could remain calm through anything, but my legendarily rock-solid nerves were becoming well and truly frayed around the edges.
Then, just after two Christmas trees, an angel, and the three wise men had started a conga line along the middle aisle, the driver announced that the train had broken down and we all had to get off. I didn't know whether to be pleased or cross.
On the plus side, I'd get away from the Christmas calamity, but the downside was I'd have to move, and it all felt like too much effort at the moment.
Life had been pretty good for the last decade. Maybe I'd used up my quota of happiness and that little bitch, karma, was going to send things downhill from now on.
How much lower could I go?
Because right now, I was at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Did she expect me to grab a spade and dig down to the fires of hell underneath?
With no other choice, I lifted my bag down from the luggage rack and made my way onto the platform, where a rail employee in a hi-vis jacket was herding passengers onto a hastily procured bus. I spotted two snowmen and a red-faced Christmas pudding heading towards it, weaving from side to side.
A sigh escaped my lips. I needed to find an alternative.
"Excuse me, is there a bus stop around here?" I asked hi-vis guy. "I'm not sure I want to take that one."
He eyed up the Christmas pudding, who'd got stuck in the bus door and was being tugged free by a shepherd and the Virgin Mary, and gave me a look of sympathy.
"Sure, love, there's a bus station just across the street."
I traipsed over to the building he indicated, a space-age monstrosity that appeared to have been modelled on a giant slug, and hopped on the first bus leaving. Looked like I'd be heading north after all.
The bus wound its way through towns and villages for a couple of hours, and I lost track of where I was. I rested my head on the window, staring without seeing, my mind blank. The glass misted up, and I was on the verge of nodding off again when the driver tapped me on the shoulder.
"You'll have to get off now, I'm afraid. This is the last stop, and I have to take the bus back to the depot for shift change."
Where the hell was I?
In a daze, I followed him to the door and climbed down. The bus chugged away, and as it receded into the distance, I found I'd been deposited in a small village. Time warp sprang to mind, and not the Rocky Horror version.
My stomach gurgled, reminding me it was almost lunchtime. I wasn't hungry, but as I'd given up on making the breakfast decision, I knew I should have something. I'd lost half a stone over the last couple of weeks through being too miserable to eat, and while I might end up looking like a supermodel, I'd make myself ill if I kept that diet up.
The tiny high street was terribly quaint. If not for the brand new Range Rover parked outside the post office and a teenage girl texting on her smartphone as she walked, oblivious to everything around her, I could easily believe I'd travelled back half a century.
I walked past a small supermarket with old-fashioned produce displays stacked in the windows and paused outside a bakery. The delicious aromas drifting out of the door tempted me, but I couldn't see anywhere to sit down in there. The temperature hovered in the low single figures, too cold to find a bench and eat outside.
So I carried on, barely glancing at the hardware store, the hairdresser, or the florist, until I arrived in the car park of a pub. A faded wooden sign creaked above my head, swaying in the breeze.
The Coach and Horses. That looked like my best option.
I had to stoop as I crossed the threshold. The inside was dim and dingy, all dark wood and low ceilings studded with blackened wood beams. A nook to my left housed a roaring fire, so I snagged a menu and curled myself into one of the leather wingback chairs set in front of it.
After I'd been there a few minutes, a kind-looking woman in her fifties came over, wiping her hands on her apron.
"What do you want, love?"
The grown-up in me knew what I should pick—salad or soup, or maybe a grilled chicken breast with steamed vegetables. But the child I'd regressed to wanted comfort food.
"I'll have the macaroni and cheese, with a side order of chips and some onion rings," I said, feeling a little guilty but beyond caring about it.
The food came out quickly, piping hot and steaming. If Toby, my nutritionist, saw me now, he'd drag me out by my feet before I could raise the fork to my mouth. I could just imagine him. A sharp intake of breath, followed by, "Don't you dare! That's got so much oil on it, America's gonna invade the plate."
It was bloody delicious.
After eating that amount of stodge, I felt tired, so I spent the rest of the afternoon hiding out by the fire, reading the newspapers that were scattered on the coffee table next to me. By 4 p.m. I started feeling guilty. Guilty that I'd just spent four hours doing nothing. I normally spent every waking minute on the job. I never had time to just be.
My mind churned. I should be working towards catching my husband's killer. There wasn't much I could do without tipping the man off, but I had the files to review. Even if I wasn't doing that, I should at the very least be finding myself a job and somewhere to live. The cash I had with me wouldn't last long, and I didn't know when I'd be ready to go back and face the remnants of my life.
I knew that was what I should be doing, but I couldn't bring myself to actually do it. I picked up the paper and began to read again instead. The lives of Hollywood Z-listers had never been so fascinating.
Ten minutes later, the barmaid interrupted me.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"No, thanks. I was planning to leave soon." Just as soon as I could drag myself away from the nice warm fire and an article about the dangers of false eyelashes.
"Visiting someone, are you?"
"Er, no."
"It's just I haven't seen you around here before. I thought you must be stopping in to see someone."
I'd only been in the countryside from time to time on assignment, and I'd forgotten how nosey its inhabitants could be. In London, everyone studiously ignored everybody else, and if you did accidentally make eye contact, people automatically assumed you'd escaped from the nearest secure hospital and gave you a wide berth.
"I'm only passing through."
"Lower Foxford's a funny place to pass through. It's not really on the way to anywhere," she said, eyeing me a bit suspiciously.
"Perhaps passing through is the wrong term. I didn't exactly plan where I was going, and this was where I ended up."
"Argument with the boyfriend was it?"
Well, thanks, that'll do. "Yeah, it was."
She laid a hand on my shoulder. "Oh, you poor love. Are you planning to go home, or do you need somewhere to stay for the night?"
"I could do with a place to sleep if you know of any hotels around here?"
She chuckled. "This village is far too small for a hotel. The nearest one's in town, but that's a fifteen-minute drive or half an hour on the bus. We've got a bed and breakfast, though."
I'd been so zoned out on the journey that I didn't even know which town she was talking about. "A bed and breakfast will do fine."
"In that case, I'll get you the number. It's ever so nice, really homely. And Carol, who runs it, will cook you dinner if you like."
I hadn't gotten around to buying a phone yet. I needed to pick up a cheap, pay-as-you-go mobile, but it had slipped my mind before I left London. It wasn't like I had anyone I was planning to call, but it might be handy for situations like this.
"Could you give me directions instead? I forgot to pick up my phone when I left."
"Of course, it's not far."