Logging - Nick Spalding Page 0,104

couple, whose day we have so rudely interrupted.

‘Thank you so much for this,’ I tell them, handing the man back his phone. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your names?’

‘I’m Jamie,’ the man says.

‘Laura,’ the woman replies. ‘And this is our daughter, Poppy. Say hello, Pops.’

The little girl gives me a wave.

‘Well, it was very nice to meet you . . . and thanks again,’ I say, looking at them properly for the first time.

There’s something . . . familiar about them. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I definitely think I’ve seen them somewhere before.

‘Thank you so much!’ Grace remarks, breaking my train of thought. I feel her tugging at my hand. ‘Come on, Andy, let’s go and get my locket!’

I nod, give little Poppy a wave back and then follow Grace in the direction of the Mega Rapids, and a very important reunion.

Grace hugs the life out of Sasha as I offer my undying gratitude to her mother.

‘Ah, it’s nothing,’ she tells me. ‘You’re lucky my girl here is never off her phone! I’m just sorry my son picked it up and took it away like that.’

‘Oh, don’t apologise!’ I respond. ‘Who knows what might have happened to it if he hadn’t?’

She smiles and looks down at where Grace is still squeezing the life out of Sasha, who is giggling away to herself. ‘Well, all’s well that ends well, eh?’

‘Absolutely!’

‘And thank heavens Sasha is such a Twitter addict!’ she adds. ‘I don’t go on it much myself. Don’t like any of that social media stuff, if I’m honest. How about you? Do you use it much?’

It takes me a second to sort out what I think is a suitable response. ‘I’ve been known to,’ I reply, suddenly feeling very, very tired.

Much later that day, Grace and I are sitting on a riverbank.

We have left Thorn Manor far behind.

A walk in the peace and quiet of the countryside has calmed us both down magnificently. We’ve only seen two people in the entire time we’ve been here, and I can’t express how happy I’ve been about that.

We bought Sasha a Thorn Manor season pass as a reward. It only seemed appropriate.

Grace clutched her locket tightly in one hand all the way back to the car. And has been checking it’s still hung around her neck every minute since.

Until we reached the tranquillity of this riverbank, that is. Since we got here, I’ve only seen her hand stray to it once.

Mind you, once we get back, I’m going to take a close look at the clasp on that bloody necklace, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again. The lovely, ornate jeweller’s pliers that Christos gave Grace will come in very handy with that little job.

‘What a bloody day,’ I remark, looking out at the pond skaters flitting about on the sunny surface of the water.

‘It certainly hasn’t been boring,’ Grace says, nodding slowly.

I arch an eyebrow. ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

She gives me a face. ‘All right, it’s been a nightmare, but the sun and the water have calmed me down fantastically.’

‘Good.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘I’m OK. It was very stressful, but it all got sorted out in the end, didn’t it?’

‘What about . . . the detox?’

I shrug my shoulders again. I’m finding that’s about the only thing I can do when thinking about the detox. I just don’t know how I feel about having broken it.

I don’t think I’ve ever once felt truly ambivalent about something before in my life. It’s a very odd sensation.

‘What’s done is done,’ I say, matter-of-factly.

‘You don’t feel bad about it?’

‘Not in the slightest. We had to get your locket back . . . and it worked. It bloody well worked.’

Grace looks a little stunned again for a moment. ‘Yeah. It did.’

And that’s the thing.

I can’t get away from the fact that without the Internet, without the ability to go online, to go on social media and put out an instant appeal, we wouldn’t have found the locket. Without that instant connection to all of those people, it would have been lost. We would have been lost.

So, it’s clearly not all bad, is it? All that tech? All those ones and zeros. All those websites and apps.

There are good reasons for having an online lifestyle. That much is very clear to me – despite all of the problems it can throw up as well.

Lots of ups and downs.

The good and the bad.

Advantages and disadvantages.

No wonder I feel so