hero - a modern-day Pied Piper, using simple techniques like animal husbandry. It allowed his detractors to claim his brand of therapy and counsel was not rooted in academia. Even so, Gabe's legend had grown. Big companies knocked on his door: why didn't he join their company and show them how to market to teens, or perhaps they could sponsor the lodge? He refused both options but that didn't stop his peers criticising him or his status increasing to world acclaim. Or near enough.
Fate is a fickle mistress, they say, and she used his success to kill not only his stellar career but also his family, in a motorway pile-up while on their way to visit his wife's family for Easter.
The real villain was not his fast, expensive German car but the semi-trailer driver whose eyelids fate had closed, just for a moment. The tired, middle-aged man pushed himself harder than he should have in order to sleep next to his wife and be home to kiss his son good morning; he set off the chain of destruction on Britain's M1 motorway in the Midlands one terrible late-winter Thursday evening.
The pile-up had occurred on a frosty, foggy highway and had involved sixteen vehicles and claimed many lives, amongst them Lauren and Henry. For some inexplicable reason the gods had opted to throw Gabe four metres clear of the carnage, to crawl away damaged and bewildered. He might have seen the threat if only he hadn't turned to smile at his son ...
He faced the world for a year and then he no longer wanted to face it. Gabe had fled to France, the homeland of his father, and disappeared with little more than a rucksack for fifteen months, staying in tiny alpine villages or sipping aniseed liquor in small bars along the coastline. In the meantime, and on his instructions, his solicitor had sold the practice and its properties, as well as the sprawling but tasteful mansion in Hurstpierpoint with the smell of fresh paint still evident in the new nursery that within fourteen weeks was to welcome their second child.
He was certainly not left poor, plus there was solid income from his famous dead mother's royalties and also from his father's company. In his mid-thirties he found himself in Paris with a brimming bank account, a ragged beard, long hair and, while he couldn't fully call it peace of mind, he'd certainly made his peace with himself regarding that traumatic night and its losses. He believed the knifing dream was symbolic of the death of Lauren and Henry - as though he had killed them with a moment's inattention.
He thought the nightmare was intensifying, seemingly becoming clearer. He certainly recalled more detail today than previously, but he also had to admit it was becoming less frequent.
The truth was that most nights now he slept deeply and woke untroubled. His days were simple. He didn't need a lot of money to live day to day now that the studio was paid for and furnished. He barely touched his savings in fact, but he worked in a bookshop to keep himself distracted and connected to others, and although he had become a loner, he was no longer lonely. The novel he was working on was his main focus, its characters his companions. He was enjoying the creative process, helplessly absorbed most evenings in his tale of lost love. A publisher was already interested in the storyline, an agent pushing him to complete the manuscript. But Gabe was in no hurry. His writing was part of his healing therapy.
He stepped back inside and closed the windows. He found comfort in knowing that the nightmare would not return for a while, along with the notion that winter was announcing itself loudly. He liked Paris in the colder months, when the legions of tourists had fled, and the bars and cafes put their prices back to normal. He needed to get a hair cut ... but what he most needed was to get to Pierre Herme and buy some small cakes for his colleagues at the bookshop.
Today was his birthday. He would devour a chocolate- and a coffee-flavoured macaron to kick off his mild and relatively private celebration. He showered quickly, slicked back his hair, which he'd only just noticed was threatening to reach his shoulders now that it was untied, dressed warmly and headed out into the streets of Saint-Germain. There were times when he knew he should probably