Stolen by Lesley Pearse Page B

pretty girl who had been in the press photograph.
    ‘Can I try again?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know if anyone told you, but I’m David Mitchell, the one who found you on the beach.’
    She smiled again. ‘You seem to be making a habit of rescuing me,’ she said, her voice a little husky. ‘I had hoped you’d come in sometime so I could thank you for finding me on the beach, but you couldn’t have picked a better night than tonight to do it. I owe you my life.’
    David smiled with embarrassment. He didn’t see himself as any kind of hero, it was just luck that he’d interrupted her attacker. ‘Did you know him?’ he asked. ‘Or have you seen him before?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged, her eyes wide and scared. ‘But I didn’t get the feeling I had known him, not the way I have had with some other people. That makes losing my memory even scarier because I don’t know who is good and who is bad. But thank you so much for the flowers and chocolates.’ She pointed to the flowers which had been arranged in a vase and now stood on the locker. ‘They are lovely.’
    ‘Did he hurt you?’ David asked, coming closer.
    ‘A bit sore here.’ She put her hand up to her neck. ‘And scared witless, but don’t let’s talk about him and what happened, tell me about you.’
    In just that one sentence David felt he knew all about her. A girl with no ego, and who cared more for others than herself.
    ‘I’m thirty-two, single, recently split with my girlfriend, and I come from a village near Bristol. I’m one of eight children, and I’m the second to eldest,’ he said, feeling as if someone had switched a spotlight on to him. ‘I’ve recently started my own company; it’s to do with telecommunications. But you don’t want to know about that, it’s boring.’
    He liked the way her lips twitched with amusement at him rattling that out. ‘One of eight, eh! Your mum had her work cut out. I was told you found me on the beach early in the morning. But why were you out at that time?’
    David smiled at her directness. ‘I go running. I take my neighbour’s dog Toto, because Fred’s got a broken leg and can’t do more than hobble on his crutches. But Toto ran ahead and was sniffing at you. I thought you were a sack of rubbish or something until I got much closer. Can you remember being in the water?’
    ‘Not really, only the very last bit as I felt the shingle scraping me. But I can remember you speaking to me and putting something warm around me. Even that’s cloudy, like a dream. I think I only became really aware of what was going on around me once I got here.’
    ‘Have you recovered any memories yet?’ he asked. ‘I read in the papers you were a hairdresser and you worked on a cruise ship. Did you have a boyfriend?’
    ‘I have remembered some things, like the place I used to work in Brighton and the people I knew there. But everything since then is still all a blank.’
    ‘I suppose if you had a boyfriend he would’ve claimed you by now,’ David said.
    Lotte smiled shyly. ‘Not if I was mean to him! Or worse still, he may be responsible for me being in the sea!’
    ‘I can’t imagine any man even thinking about hurting you,’ David said.
    ‘Well, that one who came in here earlier hadn’t come to bring me a bunch of grapes,’ she said with a sigh. She looked at him hard, almost as if she was trying to decide if she could trust him with a confidence.
    ‘I wish I knew what this is all about. It’s been a horrible day. First the doctor told me I’d had a baby in the last couple of months. How can I not remember that?’ she blurted out. ‘I’m so worried about it being all alone and hurt, and now there is someone trying to kill me. Why? What can I have done?’
    The baby added another even more horrifying dimension to her ordeal and David wished he dared scoop her up in his arms and hug her, but he was afraid that would frighten her further.
    ‘I’m so sorry, it must be awful for