‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘After all this excitement, I might need a lie down.’
‘But you’re feeling stronger?’ he continues.
‘Sure.’ She smiles. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘I’m not here enough to take any credit.’
Rob only comes down from London at weekends, and not every weekend, but he’s the best thing that could have happened to Kate. In five short months, he has turned her life around. He’s let her stay in his extraordinary house in Cornwall, spoilt her beyond her wildest dreams, and nurtured her damaged body and soul back to health.
‘I just wish I was able to paint again.’ She sighs.
‘It’ll come back,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
In recent days, she’s been trying to capture Stretch on canvas, but painting portraits of people, her first love, is still beyond her.
‘The thought of never asking anyone to sit for me again…’ she says, her words tailing off. ‘It scares the pants off me.’
He glances up, perhaps wondering if that’s a cue for another race down to the sea, but she hasn’t got the energy. Maybe she’s not as well as she thinks.
‘Does anything else scare you?’ he asks.
‘Hospitals,’ she says, shuddering at the memory. She has tried so hard to forget the tubes, the breathing apparatus, the sense of helplessness after the accident, when she was lying in intensive care.
‘Hey, it’s where we met.’ He smiles.
‘That was different. I was on a ward by then.’ And he was on a tour of the hospital, encouraging patients to visit an exhibition he’d organised in the main reception area.
‘And you? Are you scared by anything?’ she asks, doubting that he’s troubled by much in life. It’s her he worries about not himself. She used to think he was nervous when she first met him, but it’s just his energy. Rob’s protean brain never stops; it whirrs like a supercomputer. He’s an Irish geek. His phrase, not hers.
It’s a while before he answers.
‘When I was a teenager,’ he begins, ‘I was terrified of meeting my doppelgänger.’
She glances up at him, surprised. ‘It’s supposed to be a bad omen if you see one,’ he continues, looking out to sea. Rob’s never struck her as a superstitious person. Far from it. His life is ruled by modern technology, not by fanciful myths. She doodles a pattern in the soft sand, hoping that he will continue. They don’t often talk in this way, not about him, his fears. It’s always about her.
‘Are you still frightened?’ she prompts.
‘And now everyone’s into posting selfies on social media,’ he says, ignoring her question, ‘it’s well within the bounds of probability for all of us to be found by someone with an exact physical likeness.’
She feels a pang of disappointment. He’s reverted to work speak just when she thought he was opening up. Returned to safer ground.
‘There are several billion faces online, waiting to be matched. Believe me, I’ve done the maths, crunched the numbers.’
Of course he has. But she’s taken aback by what he says next.
‘We’ve all got a double out there somewhere, watching, waiting. Shadowless.’ He looks around the cove, up at the clifftop behind them. The man with the binoculars has gone. ‘And I’ve already met mine, a long time ago.’
‘When?’ she asks. He doesn’t answer.
‘They say it’s bad enough to see your double once, but it’s meant to be much worse if you meet them a second time.’ He pauses. ‘The day I see him again will be my last. He’ll take over my life, me, you, the house, my company, all that I’ve achieved, everything that’s precious to me.’
He pauses, eyes welling as the Cornish sun disappears behind a solitary cloud, casting the beach into sudden shade. ‘He’ll steal my soul.’
Friday
2
Kate
‘What to do with ourselves, eh?’ Kate says to Stretch, drumming her fingers on the Tesla’s steering wheel. She’s driven over to Newquay to meet Rob’s Friday evening flight from London Heathrow and she’s now waiting in the car park. It’s like being on a first date. She’s tried listening to the radio, but she can’t concentrate. She’s filed her nails, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, scrolled through her Instagram feed. Stretch is beside himself with excitement too, unable to settle on the plush leather passenger seat.
A Tesla’s not her natural choice of car – a bit of a boy’s toy – but she likes the fact that it’s electric. Rapid too. Rob bought it for her personal use down in Cornwall. She still can’t quite believe the new life she has. Her old Morris Minor Traveller used to spend more time at the garage being repaired than on the road.
She watches as a steady stream of people leaves the terminal: a few commuters but mostly holidaymakers. Despite herself, she starts to clock each face, noticing individual features – sallow cheeks, Roman nose, spaniel eyes. Before the accident, she was employed by the police as a civilian ‘super recogniser’. Two per cent of the population can’t remember a face, a condition known as prosopagnosia, or facial blindness; at the other end of the spectrum, 1 per cent – dubbed the super recognisers – can never forget one. That was her. It wasn’t her first choice of career – she always saw herself as a portrait painter – but she discovered that she was good at it. Very good. She once identified a suspect from just his eyes. The rest of his face was covered.
She sits up. Rob has appeared, across the car park to their left. Her heart stops. Cotton hoodie, white T-shirt and jeans, courier bag slung over one shoulder. He lowers his head to run a restless hand through his hair and looks up, taking in the evening sun with a sideways squint at the sky. She waves across at him, scrambling out of the car as he walks over. They kiss and hold each other tightly.
‘What’s with Stretch?’ he says as he slides behind the Tesla’s steering wheel.
She hadn’t noticed, but Stretch is now curled up on the seat, head down. He was so happy a few minutes ago.
‘Just tired,’ she says, scooping him up as she sits in the passenger seat. His tiny legs are trembling on her lap. ‘Walked too far today, didn’t we, little one? We’re both tired.’
Rob glances across at her and smiles. The diffident smile that had so intrigued her as she lay in hospital, wondering if her life would ever be the same again. She knows what he’s thinking. Has she just let him know that she’s too tired for their usual Friday night routine? They’ll have to see. She hasn’t felt so well this week.
‘Nice hair, by the way,’ he says.
‘Thanks.’ She’s pleased that he’s noticed. She went for an undercut earlier today, in a bid to cheer herself up, make herself feel younger.
‘I got you a present,’ he says, legs bouncing like a schoolboy beneath the steering wheel.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she says, watching him use the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe away a smudge of dirt on the car’s large touchscreen between them. She’d meant to clean the car before he arrived. He likes things to be spotless. ‘I already have everything I need down here. Thanks to you.’