The Watcher by Charlotte Link Page A

children with the artificially enhanced wives of the top ten thousand people in England.
    But perhaps that was silly of him. Perhaps the important thing really was the end result and not whether everyone involved had a pure heart and undertook their charity activity out of utter conviction. Mille was right about that: at least they were doing something.
    Samson hung around the clubhouse and car park for quite a while before finally daring to go down towards the river. Of course there was the risk that he would meet Jazz’s owner, no doubt hysterical by this stage. It would not be a problem. He could claim that he had just found the dog and was taking it back home.
    He reached the beach without having been seen. The sand was wet and heavy. The fog hung in heavy clouds over the water, muffling the cries of the seagulls. It was no longer as cold as it had been a few days ago, but Samson found the dampness in the air almost worse. It crept under your clothing and into your bones. It not only froze your body, it hollowed it out.
    They walked along the beach, past the empty, closed-up bathing huts with their colourful fronts and the carved wooden decorations on the roofs. There was nobody at all about. Jazz seemed to have got used to the situation. He jogged along beside Samson, occasionally sniffing at the stinking flotsam that the river had washed up, and when it smelt particularly interesting, he lifted his leg. He seemed to be in a good mood.
    Samson could have kicked himself for not having thought to park his car somewhere nearby. If he had, he could have warmed up now and then. He was an idiot. He had planned to wait until late afternoon to bring Jazz back. Jazz’s owner would be at her wits’ end by then and so all the more grateful to him. But by then Samson would have caught a cold.
    Very clever of me, very clever. Typical.
    After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the spit of land where the Thames became the North Sea. Here at Shoeburyness there were wonderful beaches and meadows, dotted with the old fortifications built to defend Britain from a German invasion during the war. Samson knew the area. He and Gavin had often played here as children, although it was a fair distance by foot from Thorpe Bay. Gavin had taken his friends there and Samson had been allowed to go with them. Because their mother insisted. The other children had grumbled but reluctantly put up with him. Samson had learnt then what it meant to be unloved. Not to be accepted.
    He thought about what he had said to Jazz at the golf club. It felt like hours ago. That he found Jazz’s owner pretty. Why had he thought he had to tell Jazz? Because it was not what he really felt?
    Well, you couldn’t say that she was not pretty. But to be honest, her appearance did not get his heart racing. And she was not the woman around whom his thoughts circled when he lay in bed at night and stared at the ceiling, just able to make out its lines in the weak light cast by the street lamp outside his window. It was just that she was the only woman in the neighbourhood who was roughly of an age with him. And who was not obviously in a relationship. Of course, Bartek would raise his eyebrows and ask him why on earth he did not look more widely. Why the one suitable woman whom he had stumbled across on his walks now appeared to him to be the only possible woman for him in the whole world? Bartek would mention the Internet again and all its opportunities. Very clever of him. As if Samson had not worked that one out on his own. He had even met several women that way. He could remember how awkward, even tortuous, the dates had been. He had no idea how to fascinate a woman, and each time after just a few minutes he had realised that his date was starting to get bored. That of course made him stutter and start to talk about the stupidest things. And once the women heard that he lived with his brother and sister-in-law, they quickly made their excuses and fled. Now he was