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“Jenna, don’t do this.”

“I want to know. Is it better with her than it is with me? I suppose it must be or you wouldn’t be doing this. Who made the first move? Was it you or her?”

“I’m not getting into this.”

“Do her staff know?”

“I don’t think so.”

She put a hand to her head as more tears welled in her eyes. “So she’s taking my husband and my business. Is that the plan? You’re going to leave me with nothing.”

“The business is yours. We’ll help you to run it, of course, but the profits, the success will be—”

“It’s
ours.
We’ve built it together, like our family. It’s a part of us, we’re all a part of each other, you can’t just…”

Sighing, he said, “Don’t let’s talk about it now.”

She turned away, her heart raw with the pain of so much fear and betrayal. She could feel more panic rising, trying to steal her breath, to push her over the edge into a terrible, bottomless gulf of despair. She couldn’t bear to think this was the end, that they’d already slept together for the last time, that she’d never again see him walking naked into the bathroom or simply going to open the curtains. There would be no laundry of his mixing with hers in the basket, no clothes hanging in his wardrobe or toothbrush next to hers in the mug. While she lived here alone, longing for him, unable to bear the loneliness, he’d be with Martha, loving her, laughing with her, and not even thinking about those he’d left behind.

As more sobs tore through her he held her close, murmuring softly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Then don’t do it,” she pleaded. “Call her now and tell her you’re not going through with it.”

She heard him swallow and her heart tightened with a desperate hope as long, silent minutes ticked by. In the end he said, almost in a whisper, “I’ve tried to stop seeing her, lots of times, but what I feel for her…the way we are together…Oh God, Jen, I know how hard this is for you to hear, but if I say it, perhaps then you’ll believe it. I love her, I want to be with her, and I’m prepared to leave our marriage so I can.”

Her eyes were livid with pain, her heart was too big and raw for her chest. “Then you can leave our marriage right now,” she told him. Not giving him the chance to protest, she thrust his coat at him again and left the room.

Moments later she heard his engine start, and it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to run outside and beg him to stay.

Let him go for now,
she told herself.
It’s the only way he’s going to find out this isn’t what he wants, and then he’ll come back.

—

The instant Paige saw a large brown envelope stuck to the front of her locker with the school magazine behind it, she knew it was going to be the surprise Kelly Durham had promised—
LOL.

As she opened it she had the sense of being watched, though she couldn’t actually see any of the Durmites; she was just conscious of them being around, camouflaged amongst all the comings and goings of fellow students stuffing coats into lockers, grabbing their books, and scurrying or dawdling off to their tutor groups. She had double maths this morning, a subject she’d always detested, but today she was actually looking forward to it since Kelly and most of the morons were in a different group.

Charlotte was standing behind her. “What is it?” she whispered as Paige peered inside the envelope.

Paige couldn’t tell at first, she was only able to see that it was yellow, and there was an odd bitter-sweet smell coming from it. Tentatively she put a hand inside, afraid of being bitten or stung or covered in something revolting, but whatever it was felt soft and cool, kind of like fabric, but not. She brought out a small handful of something, and when she saw what it was her heart gave a horrible thud.

The envelope was full of crushed daffodil heads. With them was a note reading like a banner headline:
Mass Daffodil Suicide After Paige No Moore Tortures with Prose.

As tears flooded her eyes, Charlotte quickly put an arm around her.

“Come on,” she urged, steering her toward the loos. “Don’t let them see they’ve got to you. They’re just fuckwits who need to fuck off and die,” she added over her shoulder.

“Daffodils have a jaunty exuberance,” Paige heard someone shouting after them, and the quote was followed by loud groans and gagging noises.

“It’s OK, I’m fine,” she told Charlotte as the door closed behind them. She couldn’t be sure whether she was crying for the flowers or for herself; it was just that seeing them all mangled and discolored had felt so cruel and meaningless. She hated being the reason they’d been plucked from their stalks only to be crushed, but at least they couldn’t feel anything, unlike her, because they were dead, unlike her.

Taking the envelope from her, Charlotte flushed the contents down a toilet. “That’s what someone ought to do to them,” she said savagely.

Only wishing she could, Paige tensed as the door opened. To her relief it wasn’t any of the Durmites, so after drying her eyes and checking that her makeup wasn’t ruined, she followed Charlotte back out to the corridor. Since the bell had sounded a couple of minutes ago, there were fewer people around now, but amongst those not yet in registration were Owen’s sister and a couple of her friends, who were standing outside the sixth-form common room.

Without giving herself time to think, Paige hurried over to her. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said awkwardly, “but if you don’t mind, I need you to tell your brother that I didn’t post anything about him on Facebook. Everyone’s saying I did, but I swear my account was hacked and I thought…Well, if you told him it wasn’t me, he might listen to you.”

The coldness of the stare she received from her—the eyes, the face so like Owen’s they could be twins—seemed to go right through her, and as she took a step back all three girls turned and walked away.

“We’re going to be late,” Charlotte said, putting a hand on her arm. “Have you got everything?”

Close to tears again, Paige managed to force them down as she nodded. She hadn’t expected Owen’s sister to cut her dead like that; then again, she wasn’t sure what she’d expected. She was just an idiot for going up to her like that in the first place. It stood to reason she’d believe Owen, and even if she didn’t she was friendly with Kelly Durham, so she probably despised Paige No Moore along with the rest of the world.

As she went into class, where Mrs. Haynes was already waiting, she kept her head up, reminding herself that she was overemotional today because of the clash she’d had with her mum earlier over her clean shirt not being ironed. Ordinarily she’d have forgotten all about it by now, but she hadn’t because, weirdly, her mum had just walked away and her dad had snapped at Paige for being rude. Of all the injustices! All she’d said was that in most people’s homes their families came first. OK, it might have been a bit harsh, but her mother spent so much time on the business now that all sorts of things were getting forgotten. Anyway, she might have been better able to take the telling-off from her father if she hadn’t felt so sure that he was the one who’d upset her mum in the first place.

Still, all that mattered right now was the fact that she wasn’t having to suffer Kelly Durham for the rest of the morning. Equal bliss was that when lunchtime came round she and Charlotte didn’t have to go to the canteen because they’d brought their own food today. Paige had had to make her sandwiches this morning, because neither of her parents had bothered to sort out anything for her, even though she’d texted from her bedroom last night to ask if they would.

She knew Charlotte’s mother had made her lunch because the neat, triangle-shaped sandwiches were wrapped in foil with a ribbon around, and the slice of homemade carrot cake that Charlotte very generously shared had been carefully protected by a pretty pink serviette.

“By the way,” Paige said as they sheltered from the wind in the art room’s front porch, “I was chatting online with that Julie Morris again last night, and she said that Kelly Durham and the sickos used to pick on her. It’s why she won’t tell me who she is, because she doesn’t want them turning on her again. Apparently it happened before I started, but you were here then, so you might know who she is.”

Charlotte was wrinkling her nose as she thought. “That cow of a slapper has picked on so many people,” she muttered. “She’s been doing it ever since we were at St. Cenydd’s primary, so it could be anyone. What else did
Julie
have to say?”

“That it got worse after she reported them.”

Charlotte stifled a sneeze. “Yeah, well, I don’t suppose that’s a big surprise. I take it they’re leaving her alone now.”

“I think so.”

“It’s what’ll happen with you. They’ll get fed up in the end and move on to somebody else. I just hope it’s not me, except they wouldn’t now that I’m kind of official with Liam.”

Though Paige knew it wasn’t official at all, she let the delusion pass, since the last thing she wanted was to crush Charlotte’s hopes. In fact, Charlotte and Liam still hadn’t graduated beyond sexting and Snapchats, most of which made it pretty clear that he was only after one thing.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Charlotte had laughed when Paige put it to her as gently as she could. “I don’t want to be a virgin all my life, that’s for sure.”

“But wouldn’t you rather be in a proper relationship before you go all the way?”

“What for? It’s supposed to be fun, something you get a kick out of, not get all hung up about.”

“So you want to be one of those fifteen-year-old mothers living on benefits who wheel their pushchairs up and down Oxford Street?”

“Stop! Who said anything about getting pregnant? We’ll use condoms, or I’ll go on the pill. I just want to have sex, Paige, not make a lifetime commitment, and I bet you’d give it up for Oliver if he asked.”

Wondering if she would, Paige had simply sighed from the depths of her broken heart as she thought of him and Lindsay, and said, “Chance would be a fine thing.”

She wasn’t going to tell Charlotte that she was still listening to his music all the time, watching his video, and reading his Facebook page. She actually
felt
like a stalker when she was doing it, but as long as he had no idea she was behaving like someone obsessed, she couldn’t see any harm in it. Admittedly, afterward she felt like a real saddo, and as big a loser as Kelly Durham kept saying she was.

Still, for all anyone knew, she and Oliver actually might end up together. No one could say what the future held other than people like Jasmina, the clairvoyant she and Charlotte were going to see later on today, and wouldn’t it just be totally out there mega-awesome if she was told that Oliver Pryce was only waiting for her to be sixteen before asking her out?

—

Much later that afternoon Paige was sitting on a hand-shaped chair in Jasmina’s New Age emporium, located in a back lane of Mumbles, trying to calm her nerves as she waited for Charlotte to come back through the beaded curtain she’d disappeared behind about half an hour ago. She couldn’t hear anything going on through there, no voices or anything. There was only Indian-type music drifting and whining about the place, along with the tinkle of water fountains and smells of incense, herbs, and candle wax. There was a display case next to her full of crystals and charms and aromatherapy stuff, and the hundreds of books and CDs on the shelves were all about psychic development, meditation, and past lives. She wondered who or what she might have been in a past life, and if she was really interested to know. More pressing for her right now was finding out what might be about to happen in this one.

Her nerves went off like a set of wind chimes as the curtain suddenly parted and Charlotte, all glittery-eyed and flushed in the cheeks, practically floated back in.

“OMG,” she mouthed, coming to perch on the rocking chair next to Paige’s plastic hand. “She is totally amazing. She told me so much….She even gave me a message from my gran.”

Since Charlotte’s gran had died six months ago, Paige was as spooked by that as she was awed. Would her grandpa come through and speak to her? She’d love it if he did, but she was sure it would terrify her too. “Did she tell you anything horrible?” she asked worriedly.

“No, nothing. It was all like totally amazeballs. She said she could see I was romantically involved with someone whose name begins either with
I
or
L
—they look a bit similar, so she couldn’t quite tell. Anyway, it has to be Liam, obviously, because I don’t know anyone whose name begins with
I.
And anyway she said he was very good-looking and likes sports and music, so it’s definitely him. Oh yes, and she said it was up to me if I wanted the relationship to go any deeper.”

Paige’s eyes rounded.

“She saw you too,” Charlotte went on excitedly. “She said a friend beginning with
P
—she does a lot of letters—was going through a difficult time right now and I should stand by you. Obviously that goes—”

They started at the gentle clatter of the curtain, and Paige felt her throat turning dry as the statuesque lady with silver wavy hair, eyes the same color as her aquamarine earrings and face as pale as the palest seashell, smiled warmly as she invited her in.

Minutes later Paige was seated across a small square table from the woman, her hands resting palms up on a black velvet tablecloth, her courage flitting about like an overstressed bird. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go through with this now; on the other hand, nothing in the world could drag her away.

Cupping Paige’s hands in her own, Jasmina closed her eyes and let several moments pass as she picked up the vibe, or communed with the future, or whatever she was doing. “I sense some disquiet,” she said gently. She looked concerned. “You are not very happy at the moment.”

Feeling instantly miserable, Paige said nothing.

“There are people around you who are a negative force,” Jasmina continued. “I see the letters
B
and
D
and
M…
Yes, I’m definitely getting
M.
Does this mean anything to you?”