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that perhaps in time she might come to appreciate me, might even one day bring herself to love me.
    I had asked her if she was unable to feel love because she had invested so much in her husband, only for that investment to turn sour. Perhaps she was afraid, I suggested, to risk giving love again, for fear of being hurt a second time. She denied this, said that she could not explain her inability to love me. I told myself that she was either deluding herself, or lying. Perhaps she was lying to save my feelings; perhaps she was capable of love, but I was not the right person. In the early days I was torn by the pain of what I saw as rejection... and yet she remained with me, gave a passable impression of, if not love, then a deep affection, and I refrained from quizzing her as to the state of her heart, and learned to live from day to day.
    "Mina," I said now. "I love you."
    She sighed and closed her eyes, and then snapped them open and stared at me. "Daniel, I wish you wouldn't..." Her plea was heartfelt.
    "Sorry. Had to tell you. Sorry if that disturbs you. You know, most women like to be told that they're loved."
    "Well, I'm not most women-"
    "I'm not going to leave you, Mina. You can tell me that you love me, and I won't walk out, hurt you again-"
    "Oh, Christ!" She sat up and stared across at me. "Why do you have to analyse? Why now? Everything's been fine, hasn't it? I'm here, with you. What more do you want?"
    What more did I want?
    Perhaps it was possessive of me to demand her love when I had everything else she could give me? Perhaps she was simply being honest when she admitted that she could not extend to me something that she claimed she no longer believed in. Perhaps I was an insecure, thoughtless bastard for demanding that she should open her heart.
    "I'm sorry. I just wanted you to know."
    She sat and stared at me, as if at a wounded animal. In a small voice she said, "I know, Daniel. I know."

    ~

    Mina's professed inability to feel love for me can only be a reaction to what she went through with her husband. She denies this—but is this denial her way of not admitting me past her defences, of not allowing me a glimpse of her true feelings and emotions?
    From the personal journals of Daniel Ellis.

    ~

    The following week I received an e-mail from a second-hand bookshop in Oxford, informing me that they had located three novels by Vaughan Edwards. I sent a cheque and the books arrived a few days later.
    One of the novels was his very last, The Secret of Rising Dene , published shortly after his disappearance. The biographical details made no reference to the fact that he had vanished, but did give the interesting information that, in '96, he was still living in the North Yorkshire village of Highdale.
    That weekend I suggested a drive up into the Dales. I told Mina that I wanted to visit Highdale, where Edwards had lived. After the spat the previous week, things had been fine between us. She made no mention of my interrogative faux pas , and I did my best not to rile her with further questions.
    "Highdale? Don't we go through Settle to get there? There's that wonderful Thai place on the way."
    "Okay, we'll call in on the way back. How's that?"
    She laughed at me. "I hope you don't expect Highdale to be a shrine to your literary hero," she said. "He wasn't quite in the same league as the Brontës-"
    "Then let's hope that Highdale isn't as trashily commercialised as Haworth, okay?"
    Deuce.
    She elbowed me in the ribs.

TWO
    We set off after lunch on an unusually bright February afternoon, dazzling sunlight giving the false promise of the Spring to come—which would soon no doubt be dashed by the next bout of bitter cold and rain.
    The approach road to the village of Highdale wound through ancient woodland on the side of a steep hill. When we reached the crest I pulled off the road and braked the car.
    I laughed in delight. The sunlight picked out the village with great golden searchlights falling through low