‘Yeah,’ I whisper. ‘Fine.’
A lie.
Because only one person knows what happened that summer.
Him.
But if he found me, why would he taunt me like this? Did he blame me for what happened? Shifting the softly snoring Ellie’s food off her lap before it ends up on the rug, I slink away to my room, closing the door behind me while I read the note a hundred more times, flipping it over and hunting for more. For something.
Someone had to be having a laugh. It doesn’t reference anything from back then. It’s just my paranoia throwing back to that awful afternoon.
I crouch against the door and screw my eyes shut,feeling every bit like the little girl I’d been back then. Remembering the long, lonely days when I’d go out and play for hours just to escape the oppressive silence of home. To avoid the piano lessons and dance tutors. To get covered in mud and chat to frogs, and splash in the shallow stream. To throw buttons in the well and wish for things my wealthy parents couldn’t give me. Attention. Siblings. Friends.
Even a puppy was off limits.
My childhood was full of echoes and emptiness, and yet I couldn’t complain. Others had it way worse.
I grip my heart stone necklace in my fist and breathe. Counting down from twenty and trying to reason that this has to be some weird joke.
It has to be.
Because if the boy is back, as a man, his memories of that summer might differ from mine. What if what I saw as saving him, he saw as betrayal? Or worse, what if it’s not him at all? What if someoneknows?
THREE
LIAM
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
My feet hit the treadmill until my thighs ache, metal music screaming in my ears to urge me on. The bass rattles loud enough to drown out the thump of my pulse and most of the weightlifters’ groans.
It had taken nearly three weeks for the bruises to heal up enough to get back to the gym. One of the few regularities in my week. In between fights, at least.
My adopted sister sends through a bundle of day passes every week, giving me free access to the university gym.
Albeit, I don’t exactly fit in.
Most of the students here are wholesome. They look like the worst thing they’ve ever seen is the bottom ofthe toilet bowl after too many cheap shots. Squeaky clean. Unblemished.
Skin that hasn’t been split open and stitched back together.
Most of my scars are covered with the loose zip-up top I wear over my gym vest, and I tend to stick to tracksuit bottoms rather than shorts. The network of ivy I’ve had tattooed over the worst of my scars doesn’t exactly blend in either.
Ivy reminds me ofher.
I’d only glimpsed her house once as a child, before her nanny hit me with a broom and drove me off, but it was covered on one side in ivy of the deepest green. The leaves had crawled up the white stone, twisting and turning, looking like an extra wall to keep me from Kat.
Only later had I learned that ivy symbolises lasting bonds.
Every time I go under the needle, I imagine it to be another tie back to her. A symbol etched in permanence. Something that no one can take from me.
Not without a sharp knife and a great deal of pain, anyway.
A woman takes the treadmill next to me, even though there are plenty of others free, and gives me a dirty look. As if I’m grubbying up the place.
