Patrick takes my hand in his and I feel like I might throw up.
But then Karina looks down at her card, and… laughs?
‘Whit and Malachi!’ she announces, all the seriousness of a few seconds ago lost.
I gasp from shock that I didn’t hear my own name. Did we… did we get away with it? I’m safe?
‘Guilty,’ Whit sing-songs, holding her hands up. ‘We tried really hard.’
‘Sorry, guys, but the firefighter outfit was too hot,’ Malachi says.
‘That’s where you slunk off to!’ laughs Warren. ‘Youdogs.’
‘Hang on, you were just giving us a load of agg a minute ago,’ grumbles Bridget.
While everyone deliberates whether this is fair, I lookover at Dolly. Somehow, she seems utterly calm like the surface of a lake. Did she not care about us getting found out? Or was she so confident we wouldn’t that it never crossed her mind?
I wish I could feel the instant relief that some people say they feel, but my heart is still racing, my body drunk on adrenaline and fear. It’s like I can’t breathe enough air.
‘Carys?’ Patrick asks, and his words are muggy, distant.
That’s when everything goes dark.
Chapter Twenty-SevenDolly
@generichandle:Omg is Carys okay???
@prunetits:Lmfaoooo imagine passing out because you heard people talking about sex, she is SO repressed
@generichandle:@prunetits you can’t just call people repressed!!!
I’ve never lived in London before. Or in a massive block of flats. Mum and I have always lived in our little terraced house. It’s embarrassingly starstruck of me to thinkwow we’re so high upbut I do think that when I look out the window. I can see the big pointy building that Greenpeace kept trying to climb up a few years ago, and the curve of Wembley Stadium. Plus a lot more buildings that aren’t remotely familiar to me.
‘Welcome to the city.’ Warren joins me at the window, arm slung over my shoulder.
‘It’s wild. It’ssobig and I feel like such a bumpkin looking at it.’
‘You good?’
I feel Warren’s eyes on me so I turn in his arms. ‘Yeah. I am. Just getting used to it all.’
He kisses me on the forehead. We’ve got such an easyintimacy that you could mistake us for an actual married couple. Which, yes, is the intention, but there’s no one else here, and definitely no cameras in the apartments. It’s just us. Just two best friends.
‘Have you called your mum yet?’
I cringe. ‘No.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘I’m just… not ready. It’s not you—’
‘I didn’t think it was,’ he says, laughing. ‘But you should talk to her.’
I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to call up Mum when this flare is barrelling towards me like a runaway train. I had hoped that I might escape the whole experiment without endometriosis reminding me it seeded its horrible little lesions all over my body, but no. I groan, clutching my pelvis with one hand and the cold flat of the window with the other.
Warren tucks his arm under one of mine for stability, ready to catch me if I drop. ‘I got you,’ he whispers as I press my sweaty forehead against the chilled glass.
The cramp passes. Such a small word for something that racks through my body with the aggression of an orgasm. Just the opposite, really. Totally fucking horrible.
