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Ash stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. “Well, it would be if they could get hold of him. The phone keeps going to voicemail, apparently. But they’ll keep trying.”

“I hope they reach him, for George’s sake. Someone has to know why he was lying in the road like that. And more to the point, someone must be worried that they haven’t heard from him. What about his phone?”

“Still dead. No one seems to have a charger for it,” Ash gasped through a yawn, which stretched out her words. “Sorry. I can’t stop yawning.”

“I feel quite invested now, don’t you?”

“Mmm, yeah.” Ash had closed her eyes.

“Don’t you think the pig thing is weird? Perhaps he’s a farmer and has a litter of piglets waiting on him to feed them.”

“Perhaps,” Ash said without opening her eyes or lifting her head from the cushion it had sunken into.

“Maybe George has an award-winning sow that escaped, and he was chasing her down, and that’s how he came to be in the road. I mean, he does look a bit weathered like a farmer, doesn’t he?”

Ash didn’t respond and Alice playfully nudged her with her foot. “Ash?”

“I should go…” she mumbled as her chest fell into a relaxed rise and fall, her features soft in the gentle glow of the lamplight.

Although she barely knew the woman, something about her filled Alice with a sense of calm. Even the steady rhythm of Ash’s sleeping breath somehow hushed the rush within Alice.

She reached across, pulled a grey chenille blanket from the back of the couch and covered the sleeping doctor. She moved slowly, not wanting to wake her. Not wanting her to leave.

PURPLE PICKLE

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

Alice awoke in a king-sized bed, her head pounding with a king-sized hangover and her legs bound in a confusing tangle of hotel bedsheets. Fran’s wayward limbs draped across Alice as if she was part of the furnishings, further adding to the suffocating constriction. A fizz of pins and needles prickled under Alice’s skin as she tried to extract her numb arm from beneath Fran’s naked body.

Fran murmured a disgruntled groan before rolling over and pulling the sheets with her, freeing Alice’s legs. Alice tried to shake some feeling back into her hand as her fuzzy eyes squinted into focus on her watch face.

“Shit. Fuck.” Alice sprang from the bed.

Fran groaned her displeasure at the noisy commotion.

“Sorry to wake you, Fran… but it’s Monday morning and I’m late for work.”

Fran didn’t stir, so Alice crawled over the bed and stroked her lover’s arm. “Fran?... Fran?”

“Yes, I heard you, Alice. And you know this is no way to wake me.” Fran shrugged off Alice’s hand and snatched the sheets up around her head.

“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you… but I promised Truscote that I’d?—”

“Gaaawd, it goes from bad to worse.” Fran voiced her muffled protest from under the covers. “The last thing I want to be thinking about at this time of the day, or in fact any time of the day, is Catherine-bloody-Truscote.”

Alice flopped back against the plush pillows. “I know, but?—”

Fran arched around and shot her a dangerous look. “Just call in sick. Tell Jeremy you’ve got your monthlies. He always gets squeamish about that. He’ll probably give you the whole week off, silly old fool.”

Alice’s insides squirmed. “Fran, don’t be unkind. Jeremy’s good to me.”

“Well, if he’s that bloody great, why aren’t you sleeping withhim?”

Alice gave her a look that didn’t need words.

Fran huffed and retreated under the sheets.

Alice sipped from the glass of water on the bedside table, savouring the quench of her dry mouth. Her eyes darted around the room as she tried to piece together a plan.