I didn't realise I'd zoned out. I jumped – crashing back to reality when Connor was suddenly up on his feet, standing so quickly he bumped into the table– the cutleries on our cafeteria trays rattled and I had to slam my hands down over them.

I could only make a noise in protest– my mouth was still full of coffee– and I couldn't swallow it until the shock had worn off. 'Jesus, Connor! What the hell?'

I looked up questioningly, but there was now an empty space where he had previously been standing and I started to look around, trying to located him.

The bright colours from the neon patches on his denim jacket caught my eye by sheer coincidence as they blurred through the exit so I stood, confused, dragging my coat off the back of my chair as I followed after him.

I lost sight of him, by the time I was out the door I could only hear his voice and his footsteps echoing off the boardwalk around the pond outside the zoology department.

I managed to catch him just as the papers in his hand slipped from his grip and fluttered to the ground. He stopped without warning, ducking to collect them and I crashed straight into him. 'For god's sake, Con,' I muttered, as I took a step back and peeled a page of his research paper off the bottom of my trainers before passing it back to him.

'Sorry, sorry, I'm–'

'Breathe.'

'Sorry,' he apologised once more, as he pulled all the pages together and scrunched them up in his arms. 'It's just– I need him to see this!'

I grabbed him under the arms and pulled him back up onto his feet. 'Come on then.'

We closed in on the man he was following.

'Professor? Professor Cutter?' He called. The professor took a half glance back over his shoulder. 'Connor Temple.'

'Yes, sorry, I've never heard of it,' the professor replied, 'I think you want archaeology, if you go around there, up to the right and keep walking, it's on your left–'

'It's not a place,' I interrupted with a laugh.

Apparently the professor and his colleague hadn't even noticed me walking alongside Connor until that moment, because at the sound of my voice he turned around with a look of confusion.

A jolt of electricity struck me in the chest as my gaze locked with his. His eyes were very blue. My next observation was that he was incredibly handsome, slightly older than myself though I supposed that made sense because he was a professor here.

'It's my name, I'm one of your students,' Connor quickly continued.

'Really?' the finally stopped. The confusion was still evident in his expression. He glanced to his colleague but said nothing.

'Yeah.' Connor smiled.

'Why don't I recognise you?'

'Well I've never actually turned up for the seminars.'

The professor started to both nod and shake his head at the same time and mumbled 'Uh–huh,' as he turned and walked away.

Connor mumbled something. I could just make out a 'why would I...' before I was already too far ahead to overhear any more.

And just as he reached the bottom of the steps up to his office, I caught him, and slammed my hand down over his on the banister. 'Professor!' He jumped, spinning around to look down at me, and I cleared my throat. 'Wait.'

'Anna!' Connor was suddenly beside me, pulling my hand back from the professors with an apologetic grimace. 'I'm so sorry,' he continued sincerely, 'she's having a bad day.'

I resented that; I wasn't aware that I'd been in a mood with him but it was entirely possible. Connor looked at me, his eyebrows lifting expectantly to prompt me. I had to meet the expectation.

I turned my head back to the professor. 'Sorry.'

'No,' he responded, 'it's alright, Miss...'

'Havisham,' I told him, 'and, please just hear him out. '

'What does he want?'

I opened my mouth to explicate but it wasn't my theory to share so I stopped. '5 minutes. That's all. Not a second more.'

'Don't touch anything,' The professor said as he led us into his office. 'This is my laboratory technician Stephen Hart.'

Stephen nodded at Connor before he turned to smile at me. 'Hi.'

'Hey,' I returned. I threw my coat over the back of a nearby chair. I felt a bit like a spare piece. I had no idea what to do with myself now I was actually in the room; getting this far was for Connor and I had no desire or intension of interposing myself further, so I sat back on the edge of a desk behind me and watched the professor lift a pile of papers from his desktop and look around for somewhere to put them. There wasn't a clear worksurface anywhere in the room– except for the desk Stephen was leaning against. The professor quickly gave up and threw the all the files into the bin.

'Oh actually... that's my dissertation.' Connor pointed to the pink folder. The professor reached down to take it out. 'Yeah,' Connor continued, 'see I argue all life on earth derived from organisms carried here by alien space craft. It's pretty sexy stuff.' Grinning, he looked back at me.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I heard the file thunk down into the bin again.

'It's a work in progress really,' Connor said.

'That's lucky,' I replied.

The professor looked up and caught my eye. I could see amusement twinkling in his expression and I felt a tug at the corners of my mouth. I folded my arms over my chest and scratched an earlobe as I lowered my attention to the carpet.

He reached back to a bureau behind him and picked something up off the top. It was wrapped in some sort of cloth. 'Tell me...' he started, pulling the wrapping away to uncover it before he held it out in front of Connor. Curiosity got the better of me and I straightened up to see it clearer. 'What this is?'

'A fish?' Connor asked.

'Obviously,' he responded.

Connor turned his head questioningly back to me. 'It's a Sarcopterygian,' I said in a low voice to try and to jog his memory. 'We've talked about this before, Con,' I continued, 'there was no trace of them in the fossil records for, what, 70 million years?' I glanced to the Professor to check if he was going to correct me, but he stayed silent. 'And then one of them just popped up in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was just totally inexplicable in modern–'

'–evolutionary terms.' Professor Cutter looked right at me, and for a second, I just stared back at him with a strange sense of confusion because we had just said the same thing at the same time. Then he smiled. 'Do you study here, Miss Havisham? I don't recognise you either.'

'No– Yes!' It had taken me a second to remember that I was back studying at the university, 'And I turn up to my lectures... most of the time. I just started my Ph.D.'

'Really?' Stephen questioned. I hadn't noticed he was listening.

I glanced briefly at him and continued to scratch my earlobe as I shrugged. 'Yeah.'

'In what?'

'Theoretical physics.'

'Really?' he said again.

I didn't blame him for sounding surprised; I knew I didn't fit the expectation of a typical physicist –even if it had nothing to do with what I looked like. I couldn't control how my brain worked. It didn't ever stop. I would often gravitate to the most unfathomably complicated things I could find in an attempt to at least slow it down.

'It's my thing. But I have a lot of interests and a few BSc's to be honest. I don't get a lot of sleep.'

The professor nodded. 'Well it's hard to still a curious mind. In the case of evolution Darwin provides most of the answers. It's the pieces that don't fit that interest me.'

'See that's why I was wondering whether you've seen this,' Connor said. He pulled a newspaper from the pile and held out to the Professor. 'Some sort of giant undiscovered predator,' Connor said. The professor took half a look at the front cover before dismissing the newspaper and passing it to Stephen. 'Oh no– no no no no no no.' He snatched the paper back. 'This is the real thing.'

'Connor, you should get out more,' the Professor said, 'go to a bar. Meet a nice girl –life will be a lot less confusing.'

'Hey. I've already got a girlfriend,' he replied.

And before either of the faculty members could turn their heads to me I lifted my hands in surrender. 'I'm his cousin,' I stated.

'That's not really the point,' Connor continued, 'there's an eyewitness who claims to have seen it.'

'People claim to have seen the loch ness monster, it doesn't mean to say it's there.'

'Well not now obviously because it died years ago. The government, they took the body away and covered the whole thing up.'

'This is just a hoax, forget it.'

'Your wife wouldn't have ignored–'

'Connor!' I said in outrage before he could even finish.

'It's alright, Miss Havisham,' The professor said. 'Connor, my ex–wife was a serious scientist. She wasn't some gullible monster hunter.'

'Sorry.'

'It's okay.'

'I just thought you might want to check it out, that's all. It's not as though the forest of Dean's far away though.'

Stephen lifted his head.

'The forest of Dean?' The Professor repeated.

With the palpable change of atmosphere, I straightened up.

'If we leave now we could be there by lunch,' Stephen explained as he looked up from his watch and almost immediately started for the door.

Connor spun around, eyebrows raised and mouth wide open with excitement, as he leant forward to hug me. A quiet 'thank you!' split his lips and he ran off after Stephen.

'Alright... Anna Havisham...' The professor said, 'get your coat.'

The man who came out to meet us at the warehouse car park looked as pale as death. 'I'd just finished my round when I caught a glimpse of it on the monitor,' he said, fidgeting with his cap whilst he walked us over the vehicle. The HGV's trailer had been destroyed. The metal was torn and hanging off the frame like it was nothing more than fabric.

'Can you imagine how much force it took just to rip this thing open?' Connor mumbled aloud, 'look at the size of the marks.'

I ran a finger through the red liquid dripping down from the holes. 'It's blood.'

'You know if you want my opinion I think it's– you don't do you.'

'Well if I found these gauges in the wild I'd be certain we were looking for a large predator,' Stephen said.

'But we're in the forest of Dean...'

My eyes scanned each mark as I moved along until I found myself standing at the end of the trailer and turned to the fence. I wasn't sure what I was expecting– I'd reached what I thought was a logical conclusion: a human culprit– but the second my gaze moved from the lorry I saw a large gap in the railings.

It looked like it had trampled– something had gone through from here to the forest and the fence was just collateral.

'Professor?' I called, 'you need to see this.'

He walked away from the trailer and stopped beside. 'Jesus–'

'It was huge and it was so fast it was gone across the yard in a second.'

'Stephen?' The professor called. 'Come give me a logical explanation for this.'

'It's a hoax, obviously.' But the incredulous words dissolved in his mouth as he rounded the end of the trailer and his eyes snapped up to the twisted ruts of steel. 'Just a difficult one to pull off.' He finished stubbornly.

'Can I say something–' Connor announced as he appeared at Stephens side. Before he could continue, Professor Cutter stepped quickly forward and walked away from us.

'Is he alright?' I interrupted.

'Helen Cutter came to this area 8 years ago to investigate a creature sighting. She disappeared in this forest; her body was never found. Just a rucksack. No blood, clues, nothing...She just vanished.'

A few hours later, I was staring into the fish tank in the bar of the Eddington hotel. I'd left Connor upstairs in our room because he was taking too long to get ready and come down to the bar to meet the others, only to find I was the first one here. I'd made the most of the hold up and found a sofa.

I drew a few gentle patterns on the glass of the fish tank, chin propped up on my hand as I stretched over the sofa arm, and watched how the fish swam closer to inspect my finger.

I caught a movement of someone behind me in my peripherals, the sofa opposite me sighed beneath the weight of the body crashing down on it, and if I hadn't just assumed it was Connor joining me, I never would have turned and immediately –accidentally– locked eyes with a complete stranger.

There was a man in a suit sitting opposite me. His hair was slicked back with gel and looked sticky, and he was balancing a glass of wine on his crossed knee.

'Hi.'

For some reason his tone annoyed me. Perhaps it was just the tone but the grin and the accompanying arrogance of his body language that really bothered me.

My nose scrunched.

'Oh, so that's how it's going to be, is it?' I didn't want to give him any reason to continue his attempt at a conversation; I wasn't interested, so I looked away. 'Aw, come on, gorgeous,' he cooed, stretching out his arm across the back of the sofa, 'talk to me.'

I had an overwhelming suspicion that he was already quite drunk but very well-practiced at masking it.

I bit the inside of my cheek, considering taking it easy on him for, like, a split second before I realised my mouth had already opened 'because –let me guess– you're so interesting.'

The man didn't flinch. 'I just want to talk. It's not like it's hard.'

It was a battle of wit. He should have come better prepared.

'I'm not doing charity work.'

'Why don't you tell me your name and I'll buy you a drink.'

'Why would I want that?'

'Because you haven't got a drink.'

'No,' I agreed. 'But I do have a boyfriend.'

I'd always thought it was disgraceful who men respected another man's "property" more than a woman's right to not be interested in them.

He laughed. 'Yeah right,' he said. But there was a slight inflection on his tone now like he wasn't covering his disappointment as well as he thought he was. 'You don't have a boyfriend.'

At that moment there was movement in the doorway, my attention shifted as the professor walked in with his head down, scratching his chin, making a beeline for the bar.

I just couldn't help myself.

I got up without another word and strolled towards him. 'Professor?' He turned his head, I put a hand on his shoulder and leant in before he could ask any questions, rising onto my tiptoes and placing a kiss against his lips.

It wasn't supposed to last longer than a second or two, and I'd planned to pull back once I was sure the man had seen. But before I got the chance his arm circled around my waist, his lips pressed back against mine with a softness and determination I totally wasn't expecting and the processors in my brain ceased functioning. For a moment everything was still.

I came back to myself with ice cold clarity and pulled back. His eyes stayed closed, the look of confusion lingering in his furrowed brow.

'I'm so sorry,' I apologised quickly 'there was a man– it doesn't matter...'

'No,' his eyes opened and he blinked a few times. 'That's quite alright, Anna Havisham. I'm very glad I was here to help.'

I whipped my head around back to the sofas just to see if the man was watching. He was. His stare was dead cold and I turned back around. 'You couldn't do me a favour?'

'Another one?'

I tutted, 'just one more thing I promise.' And I looped an arm around his neck as I glanced back over my shoulder again and waved to the man. 'Give him a smile.'

'Is that the man?' The arm around my waist tightened unexpectantly, pulling me closer to him and I lost my balance. I caught myself, hand braced against his chest, and looked up at him.

'Thought I was going to have to tell him to go fuck himself.'

'But instead you thought you'd break his heart. That's very kind of you.' And then he lifted his free hand from the bar and gave a short, sarcastic wave to the man.

'Thank you.'

He smiled. 'Any time.' Then he moved against, stretching back behind me to grab a hold of the top of a stool and drag it closer. 'Here. We might as well sit down, we've got a minute.' And he gestured to the stool.

I pulled my hand back from his chest, his arm dropped from around my waist and I stepped back to sit on the stool.

'Thanks.'

He sat down on the stool beside mine and faced me.

A silence quickly fell between us. The background noises did their best to cover the tension, the piano was still playing Billy Joel, the bartender was further up the bar serving a couple sitting there.

I wanted to speak. Momentarily it seemed I had forgotten how to start a conversation.

The professor cleared his throat as I sighed.

'So–'

'Do you–'

We both laughed a little bit. 'Oh,' I said, as I gestured for him to continue. 'Sorry, go on...'

'After you.'

'...what do you think it is?'

The professor thought for a second. 'I can't dismiss the evidence,' he said. Then, the nervous smile slipped from his lips. 'For the time being I'm trying to keep an open mind. As crazy as it seems.'

'I know right. I keep thinking about the logistics– Occam's Razor– you know. Connor's talking about monsters.'

'Maybe you're both right: I think it just depends on how you define the term monster. A wild panther may look pretty terrifying on a dark night.'

'So, is that what you think we're dealing with?'

'That's my best guess, if it exists at all.'

'I'm not sure what exactly I should hope for, Professor. And... I don't want you to tell me what it is, I want to know what you think it could be.'

'Call me Nick,' he responded, 'and honestly? I think there's something going on here... But what about you, Miss Havisham, do you believe in monsters?'

'It's Anna,' I replied, 'and I've seen monsters, I've met them, but they weren't creatures from the dark.' I could see his brain whirring in the way his eyes glazed over as he looked at me, like he wanted to ask, he wanted to question me about it but he wasn't going to. And I was grateful for it. I looked down at my watch and straightened up. 'Um, we should probably–' I pointed towards the door. The guys would be down here any second. Perhaps they already were.

'Yeah,' he agreed, but he didn't move. His gaze didn't shift from something on my face and it took me much longer than it should have to realise he was looking at my lips. 'I've just... I've gotta do this again now because otherwise I just know I'm gonna regret it.'

Before I realised what he was doing, he rested a hand on my cheek and pulled me in to press his lips against mine again. His other hand rested on my waist again, grip tight like he didn't want to let go, and my arms slowly reached up to wrap around his neck just to ensure he didn't slip away.

My heart was pounding in my chest, his lips moved against mine almost passionately in a sort of kiss that told me it may have been even longer for him since he had kissed anyone than it had been for me. And I didn't want to pull back because it felt good. His pulled back way too soon, dropping a final chaste kiss on my lips before he slid down off his stool.