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time. Eight in the morning. Another day and time to try again with Operation Turner.
    Make myself indispensible. Turner needed an assistant and his assistant was away, ergo he needed her.
    Matty dressed in a lurid pink miniskirt that sat low on her hips and a baggy, hooded red sweater spotted with white snowflakes. She had nothing that fit properly, nothing that matched. As she padded downstairs, she expected to hear Turner pottering about, but the house was silent. A peep through a front window told her his car sat where he’d parked it last night. Was he still asleep?
    She wandered into the library, looked at the large number of boxes stacked there then glanced at the empty shelves and smiled. She could tell a huge amount about someone from the books they read and she’d be doing him a favor. She ripped open the first container.
    Matty’s heart sang when she discovered thrillers she’d enjoyed then sank when she saw the number of history books. If that was his passion, she’d struggle. It had taken her ages to figure out how the Romans had first come to Britain in 55 BC, and had then come again in 54 BC. Well, math wasn’t her strong point either.
    She unpacked and slotted the books on the shelves. It took hours. Partly because each time she opened another box, she had to rearrange the books she’d already shelved and partly because she got engrossed in some of them. Turner had some ancient, musty-smelling volumes about plants and a set of encyclopedias that looked even older, plus books in a language she didn’t recognize. They looked really ancient. One book turned out to be a box and inside she found three small hand-written volumes with a page of the weird language opposite a page of English. Matty assumed it was a translation.
    “In ordinary circumstances, contradictions among those who remain are not antagonistic. To achieve survival, we must be tempered in the storm of evolution.”
    Huh? A couple of lines and she’d had enough. She put them back in the book box and on the shelf with the rest.
    After she’d flattened the empty cartons and taken them to the garage, the library looked really nice, a little as it had when she was a child, except her father’s passion had been botany. It seemed to be some sort of family tradition. One that Matty hadn’t inherited. She’d managed to save a few of her father’s older volumes but only for sentimental reasons. She had little interest in plants.
    When Matty looked at the time, she was staggered to see it was after five. There had been no sign or sound of Turner. She hoped he wasn’t sick. What if he’d gone out walking and fallen in the river? He might have got snagged up on a submerged shopping cart and drowned. Or he could have fallen into an opencast mineshaft and got stuck in a hole. Her heart pounded. She’d spent all day enjoying herself when he might be in trouble.
    Matty raced upstairs and opened the door of the master bedroom. Wow, it was dark in there but the light coming from the landing revealed a man-sized shape under the duvet. She blew out the breath she’d been holding.
    Her relief didn’t last long. Why would he still be in bed? How sick was he?
    She tiptoed across the room to his side. No movement. No sound. What if he’d had a brain hemorrhage and lay paralyzed? What if he could only blink to communicate? What if he was dead ?
    Matty eased back the cover from his head, exposing tousled black hair, closed eyes, strong nose, lovely lips. Would a kiss wake Sleeping Beauty? She nearly giggled and then remembered she was worried. She held her hand over his mouth but could feel no expiration of air. Oh God. Now I am worried.
    “Are you dead?” Matty whispered.
    “Yes. Go away.”
    She yelped and jumped backward.
    Turner pushed himself upright and the duvet fell to his waist. Looks like he sleeps naked like me. Something we have in common. Yippee.
    “What the hell are you doing in here?” he snapped. “How did you get in? The door was