My Best Friend's Girl

by Dorothy Koomson

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

A gripping and emotional read about friendship, betrayal and forgiveness from Sunday Times bestselling author DOROTHY KOOMSON

'Please don't ignore this. I need to see you. I'm dying.'

On Kamryn's thirty-second birthday she receives a card from Adele, the woman who betrayed her and she vowed never to speak to again.

Adele has contacted Kamryn because she is desperate - she needs someone to take care of her precious daughter, Tegan, and she's running out of time.

Kamryn loves Tegan, but can she really put aside all the hurt and pain of the last few years to rescue Adele when she needs her most?

(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: August 9, 2018

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

prologue

To be honest, I’d been tired for so long I don’t remember, not accurately, when I realised something serious was wrong with me. I put up with it, though. Told myself I needed more rest and that it’d pass. But it didn’t.

No matter how much I slept I was always tired. Proper, bone tired. It wasn’t until Tegan asked me to go to the doctor that I realised. My four-year-old actually voiced what I couldn’t – wouldn’t – face, the simple fact that I wasn’t myself any more. She’d gotten tired of me being too exhausted to play with her. Of me having nosebleeds. Of me being breathless after even the smallest amount of exertion. ‘Mummy, if you go to the doctor she can make you better,’ she said one day out of the blue. Just said it, and I did it.

I sat in the doctor’s, told her what was wrong, and she did a blood test. Then called me in for more tests. More tests with names and words I’d heard on the medical shows on telly, then words that never had a happy ending on TV were being bandied around. But they couldn’t truly have anything to do with me. Not really. They were eliminating possibilities.

Then, I got the call. The call saying I had to go see my doctor straight away. Even then . . . And even when she told me . . . When she said she was sorry and then started talking about treatments and prognosis, I didn’t believe it. No, that’s not right. I did believe it. I just didn’t understand. Not why. Not how. Not me.

It took a good few days for what I’d been told to sink in. Maybe even a week. Every second counted, they said, but I still couldn’t comprehend. I didn’t look that ill. A little paler, a little slower, but not really and truly ill. I kept thinking they were wrong. You hear about it all the time, the wrong diagnosis, people defying the doctors’ theories, people finding out they had glandular fever instead of . . .

About a week later, on my way to work, I got to the train station early, mega early, as usual. You see, I’d built lots of compensators – things that made normal activities easier – into my life to accommodate the disease invading my body: I left for the station early so I wouldn’t ever have to run for the train; I brought food to work so I wouldn’t have to walk to the sandwich shop at lunchtime; I cut the childminder’s hours so I wouldn’t be tempted to go for a drink after work.

Anyway, on this particular day I sat at the station and a woman came and stood beside me. She got her mobile out of her bag and made a call. When the person on the other end picked up she said, ‘Hello, it’s Felicity Halliday’s mother here. I’m calling because she’s not very well and she won’t be coming to school today.’ I fell apart. Just broke down in tears. It hit me then, right then, that I would never get the chance to make a call like that. I would not get to do a simple mum thing like call my daughter’s school. There were a million things I would never get to do again and that was one of them.

Everyone was terribly British about it all and ignored me as I cried and sobbed and wailed. Yes, wailed. I made a hideous noise as I broke into a million, trillion pieces.

Then this man, this angel, came to me, sat down, put his arm around me and held me while I cried. The train came, the train left. As did the next one and the next one. But this man stayed with me. Stayed with me as I cried and cried. I totally soaked and snotted up the shoulder of his nice suit jacket but he didn’t seem to mind, he waited and held me until I stopped wailing. Then he gently asked me what was wrong.

Through my sobs, all I could say was, ‘I’ve got to tell my little girl I’m going to die.’

chapter one

The postman jumped as I snatched open the front door to my block of flats and eagerly greeted him.

Usually when we came face to face, he’d have buzzed up to my first floor flat and I’d come shuffling down, pulling on my dressing gown as I tried to rub dried sleep drizzle off my face. Today, though, I’d been hanging out of my window waiting for him. I was still in my usual post-receiving attire of dressing gown and had sleep-sculpted hair, but this time my eyes weren’t barely open slits, I’d washed my face and I was smiling.

‘Special day, is it?’ he said without humour.

He clearly didn’t like this reversal of roles. He wanted me to be sedate and disorientated when he handed over my post. It was probably the only power trip he got of a day. Ahhh, that’s not fair. He was lovely, my postman. Most postmen are nice, aren’t they?

In fact, everyone in the world was lovely today.

‘It’s my birthday,’ I grinned, showing off my freshly cleaned teeth.

‘Happy birthday,’ he commented, dour as a priest at prayer time, and handed over the post for the four flats in our block. I keenly took the bundle that was bound up by a brown elastic band, noting that almost all of the envelopes were red or purple or blue. Basically, card coloured. ‘Twenty-one again, eh?’ the postie said, still unwilling to be infected by my good humour.

‘Nope, I’m thirty-two and proud,’ I replied. ‘Every birthday is a bonus! And anyway, today I get to wear gold sequins and high heels and brush gold dust all over my cleavage.’

The postie’s small brown eyes flicked down to my chest area. Even though it was the height of a long, hot, humid summer, I was wearing pyjamas and a big towelling dressing gown, so he didn’t see anything suggestive – he was lucky to get even a glimpse of my throat skin. That seemed to startle him, that the chest of which I spoke was highly covered, and he immediately snatched his eyes away again. It’d probably occurred to him that he shouldn’t be eyeing up the women on his delivery route – especially when said lady wasn’t even undressed enough to make it worth his while.

He started backing away. ‘Have a good day, love,’ he said. ‘I mean, dear. I mean, bye.’ And then he legged it down the garden path far quicker than a man of his girth and age should be able to.

The postman moved so fast he probably didn’t even hear me call ‘You too’ after him as I shut the door. I slung the letters that weren’t for me, but had the audacity to arrive at this address today, on the floor of the hallway. They landed unceremoniously on top of the other, older letters that sat like orphaned children, waiting, longing to be rescued. I usually felt sorry for those letters, wished the people they’d been sent to would give them a good home, but they weren’t my problem today. I barely gave them a second thought as I took the stairs two at a time back up to my flat.

In my bedroom I had already laid out my birthday breakfast feast: fresh croissants with smoked salmon, three chocolate truffles and a glass of Möet.

Everything had to be perfect today. Everything. I’d planned it that way. After I’d devoured my special brekky, I’d stay in bed until midday, opening birthday cards while receiving calls from well-wishing friends and relatives. Then I had an appointment at the hairdresser to get my hair washed, deep conditioned and cut. I was going for a radical change – ditching my usual chin-length bob for a style with long layers and a sweeping fringe. After that, I’d come back home and get dressed up. I really was going to wear a dress of gold sequins that set off my dark skin in a spectacular fashion. I was going to squeeze my feet into gold high heels and I was going to brush gold dust over my cleavage. And then a few of the girls from work were coming round for drinks and nibbles before we went into town to dance the night away.

I slipped carefully under the sheets, not wanting to spill any of the special spread, then took a swig of champagne before I tore through my cards like a child. Around me the pile of brightly coloured envelopes grew as I tugged out the cards and smiled at the words written inside.

It wasn’t dim of me, then, not to notice it. It was like all the others. Slipped in among the bundle, innocuous and innocent looking. And, like all the others, I didn’t really look at it, didn’t try to decipher the handwriting on envelope, ignored the picture on the front. I simply opened it, eager to receive the message of love that had been scrawled inside. My heart stopped. I recognised the handwriting before I read the words. The words I read with a racing heart.

Dear Kamryn, Please don’t ignore this.I need to see you. I’m dying. I’m in St Jude’s Hospital in central London.Yours, Adele x PS, I miss you.

Slamming it shut I registered for the first time that the card had ‘I love you’ on it instead of one of the usual birthday greetings.

The piece of glossy cardboard sailed across the room when I slung it as though it had burnt my fingers. It landed on the wicker laundry basket and sat there staring at me. With its white front and simple design, and three treacherous words, it sneered at me. Daring me to ignore it. Daring me to pretend the words inside weren’t carved into my brain like they were scored onto the card.

I took a slug of my champagne but it tasted like vinegar in my mouth. The croissant, carefully sliced and filled with smoked salmon, was like sawdust as I chewed. The truffles were paste on my tongue.

Still the card stared at me. Goading me. Ignore me if you can, it mocked. Go on, try it.

I threw back the covers, got out of bed and went over to the card. Dispassionately, I tore it in half. Then tore those pieces in half again. I stomped into the kitchen, stamped on the pedal bin to open it and dropped the remains on top of the rotting vegetables, the greasy leftovers and discarded wrappers.

‘There. That’s what I think of that! And you!’ I hissed at the card and its sender.

I returned to my bed. That was better. Much better. I sipped my champagne and ate my food. And everything was all right again. Perfect, even. Just like it should be on my birthday.

Nothing could ruin it. No matter how much anyone tried. And they were bloody trying, weren’t they? You don’t try much harder than with that message, dressed up as a birthday card. Very clever. Very bloody clever. Well it wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t falling for that nonsense. I was going to carry on with my plan. I was going to make my thirty-second more special than my eighteenth, twenty-first and thirtieth birthdays combined.

Because when I am thirty-two I shall wear gold sequins and six-inch stilettos and brush gold dust over my cleavage, just as I promised myself ages ago.

The door was ajar and didn’t protest as I gently pushed on it. I didn’t knock. I never knocked on an already open door because to me it always said, ‘Come, no knocking required.’

From her place amongst her white pillows she smiled as I stepped into view. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she whispered.

chapter two

Dolce & Gabbana. Even now, at what was probably one of the darkest hours of her life, Adele wore designer clothes – a white D&G T-shirt peeked out under the covers. She always did have more style than sense.

At one time, that thought, twisted as it was, would’ve been out of my mouth – callously uttered to her because she would’ve appreciated it. I couldn’t today. Things had drastically changed between us. Firstly, I hadn’t seen her in two years. Secondly, the last time I saw her, she had her fingers buried in her hair as though on the verge of ripping out her blonde locks from their roots, mascara was running down her face and snot was dribbling out of her nose. She was talking, stumbling over her words, saying things I didn’t want to hear. I was grabbing my clothes and my bag and blinking back tears and trying not to collapse in a heap. Things don’t go back to being normal after you part on those terms. Thirdly, she was ill.

We didn’t speak as a nurse fussed around Adele, noting the readings on the machines, checking the lines on the drips, plumping up the pillows so they propped the patient upright. The nurse had a round, friendly face with big brown smiling eyes. She reminded me a lot of my mother, particularly because of the way she’d pulled her plaited hair back into a ponytail. She grinned at me as though she knew me, told Adele not to talk for too long and left us to it.

Still we didn’t speak. ‘Hi’ seemed a pretty insufficient way to greet someone I’d sworn never to communicate with ever again. Someone I’d done my best never to communicate with again.

‘That nurse reminds me of your mum,’ Adele said when the silence had started to drown out even the hum of the machines.

I nodded in agreement but couldn’t bring myself to talk. I just couldn’t. This wasn’t the Adele – Del as I called her – I’d come to see, this wasn’t the Adele I’d braced myself to talk to after all this time.

I don’t know what I expected, hadn’t really thought about it when I got on that train to travel two hundred miles from Leeds to London, but I didn’t expect her to look like this. I could close my eyes and see the Del I expected to see. That mass of curly honey-blonde hair, which was always trimmed to shoulder length, would be there. As would that smooth, healthy glow of her creamy-white skin. What would be the clearest thing about the image? Her eyes, which were the blue-grey colour of highly polished steel, or her smile, which would always light up everything around her? Whichever it was, behind my eyelids, the real Del would be there. So perfect and three-dimensional I could reach out and hug her.

With my eyes open, Del Brannon was different. Altered.

The Del who was propped up in bed had skin that was a blotched patchwork of grey, white and yellow. Her face was hollowed out from her weight loss, and under her sunken eyes, conspicuously missing their eyebrows, deep dark circles were scored. Around her head was tied a royal blue scarf, probably to hide her lack of hair. My body went cold. Her beautiful, beautiful hair was all gone. Stripped away by the drugs that were meant to make her well.

I didn’t know she’d look like this. Frail. Like an anaemic autumn leaf – so dried, brittle and fragile that one touch would crumble her into a million pieces.

‘It’s good to see you,’ she said, her voice a low rasp that was probably as painful to create as it was to hear. ‘I’m glad you came.’

‘What’s with the voice?’ I asked.

‘It’s the treatment. Makes my mouth dry and my tongue feels like it’s grown shag pile.’

‘God, remember when we felt like that because we’d actually enjoyed ourselves by getting drunk the night before?’ I commented, then mentally slapped myself. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded – I was trying to express sympathy but it’d come out wrong.

Del’s dry, cracked lips pulled up into a smile. ‘Trust you,’ she said. ‘No one else has dared say something like that to me. Too scared of making me cry, I suppose. Too scared that I might break down and die on them. Trust you to break the taboo.’

‘It wasn’t intentional,’ I replied, suitably shamefaced. ‘Just being myself.’

‘I wouldn’t want you any other way,’ she said.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. That sounded wrong, too. Harsh. Unfeeling. Admittedly, part of me was still that woman who was picking up her belongings and swearing to herself she’d never be that hurt again, but most of me was broken-hearted. I was used to solving problems with action and here I was, staring at someone who was in pain, knowing I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. That’s why I sounded so harsh. I was helpless and I didn’t ‘do’ helpless very well. ‘I mean, you said you were . . . What are you ill with?’

‘Leukaemia,’ she replied.

‘I thought only children got that,’ I said before I could stop myself.

‘That’s what I said!’ she exclaimed. ‘You know, when the doctor told me, I said those exact words. It went down like a cup of cold sick, I can tell you.’

‘Glad to know it’s not only me who says inappropriate things,’ I muttered loudly.

‘Yep, even when I’m at death’s door.’ She said that so blithely, calmly. I had an urge to reach out, take hold of her bony shoulders and shake her. Violently. So violently that she was reminded what was going on. How could she be so laid-back about it? So comfortable with the notion?

I was still struggling to understand how someone who was my age, who went to the gym, who ate relatively healthily, who had never smoked, who drank as much as I had woke up one day to find there was a clock ticking over her head; discovered she was one step closer to knowing when she’d meet her maker than I was. I’d been wrestling with this thought since I read the card she sent me.

‘It’s all right, you know, I’ve accepted what’s happening to me,’ Del reassured me, as though reading my thoughts. ‘It took a while but I’m here. I know it’s going to take you a while to catch up.’

‘Only a little while,’ I said sarcastically.

‘I had to get here quickly,’ she continued, ignoring not what I’d said but how I’d said it. ‘I had to make plans. It’s not just about me. So, no matter how much I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening, I had to remember the most important person that needs taking care of.’

Tegan. She was talking about her daughter Tegan. How was she taking this? If I was having problems dealing with it, how was a clever little five-year-old coping?

‘I suppose you’ve worked out why I wanted to see you,’ she said after another long silence had passed.

‘To make me feel guilty for ignoring you for two years?’ I replied.

‘Apart from that,’ Del said, a sly smile playing around her grey lips.

‘Well then, no.’

‘After I’m gone . . .’ Del paused, took a deep breath, ‘I want you to adopt Tegan.’

‘What?’

‘I want . . . No, I need you to adopt Tegan after I die.’

I could feel the frown creasing my forehead, and my face twisting itself into an ‘Are you mad?’ look.

She stared back at me as if she expected an answer to what she’d just said.

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ she replied, exasperated. ‘If I was joking there’d be a punchline and it’d be funny. No, Kamryn, I’m not joking. I want you to adopt my daughter when I die.’

‘All right, Adele, if you’re serious, I’ll give you a serious answer. No. Absolutely no.’

‘You haven’t even thought about it.’

‘There’s nothing to think about. You’ve always known that I don’t want children. I told you enough times, I’m not having kids.’

‘I’m not asking you to have kids, just my one.’ Del inhaled deeply, a move that seemed to take all her strength and added to her grey colour. ‘I’ve done all the hard stuff, morning sickness, losing my figure, twenty-four hours in labour . . . You just have to look after her. Be her mother. Love her.’

‘Just’ look after her. ‘Just’ be her mother. Like that was easy. And anyway . . . ‘Del, we haven’t even spoken in two years and now you’re asking me to adopt a child? Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? Why I’m having problems with this?’

‘Tegan isn’t “a child”,’ she snarled, instantly enraged. Of all the outrageous things I’d said since I arrived, this was the one that got her goat; that made her so angry her steel-blue eyes seemed to pulsate with the defiance that now sat in them. ‘She’s your godchild. You loved her once, I refuse to believe that’s changed.’

I couldn’t argue with that. I had loved Tegan. I still loved Tegan.

I glanced at the photo on her nightstand. It was in a plain glass frame, a big close-up picture of Tegan and Del. Tegan had her arms linked around her mum’s neck, holding her mum’s face as close as possible to hers. They were both grinning at the camera. Tegan was a miniature version of her mother in every respect except her nose. The shape of her nose she inherited from her father.

‘Kam, I still think of you as my best friend,’ Del was saying. ‘And you’re the only person, the only person on earth I’d trust with my daughter.

‘She was like your child once. And, I’m sorry to lay this on you, but I don’t know how long I’ve got left, I can’t afford to mess about. If you don’t take her . . . What will happen to her? There’s no one else. There’s no one—’ The whites of her eyes darkened with red and her chest started to heave. ‘I can’t even cry,’ she whispered between heaves, ‘because I’m not producing enough tears.’ Instead of crying, she started to choke, each cough convulsing her thinned body.

I lay a hand on her forearm. ‘Please don’t,’ I said, desperate to stop her. ‘I’ll think about it. But I’m not promising anything, all right?’

Del kept inhaling deeply until she’d calmed down. ‘You’ll really think about it?’ she said when she was calm enough to speak.

‘Yes. I’ll think about it.’


‘That’s all I ask, that you think about it.’

‘And I will. But only think.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’

We lapsed into silence. I should be going. She’d done the deed, had asked the unthinkable of me, so what was there to do but for me to leave, retreat and think about it as I promised?

‘Kam,’ she began. The way she said my name made me look at her and I knew instantly what she was going to say next. I didn’t want her to say it. I wanted her to leave it. ‘About what happened—’

‘Don’t,’ I cut in, a warning note in my voice.

‘You never let me explain,’ she pleaded.

‘Don’t,’ I warned again.

‘Kam, listen to me. I didn’t . . .’

‘I SAID DON’T!’ I shouted so suddenly and brutally that I even frightened myself. ‘I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to hear about it, and I certainly don’t want to talk about it. It’s over with. Leave it.’

It was a wound that hadn’t healed. She’d been picking at a superficial scab, one that skimmed the surface of an injury that was so deep even the slightest jolt would have it gushing blood again. But still, I shouldn’t have unleashed my anger like that. She was ill. She didn’t have the strength to fight back.

‘Just leave it,’ I repeated in a calmer tone. ‘Please.’

Del did as she was told and refocused her line of sight on the picture on her nightstand. She half smiled, but I could see the sadness tugging around her eyes. Tegan was everything to Adele. Everything. I could never fully understand that, I suppose. Tegan was important to me, but she seemed to be Adele’s reason for living. Everything she did, thought and said was about Tegan. Nothing and no one came before Adele’s child. The idea of leaving her must be more than she could bear. And how do you explain to a child that you’re leaving them? How do you tell your child you’re dying?

‘Where is she?’ I asked in an attempt to diffuse the tension in the room and the guilt in my soul.

She closed her eyes briefly, as though pained, before delivering her next bombshell in a quiet voice. ‘With my father and his wife.’

My heart skipped a beat. Were things so bad she’d really left Tegan with them? ‘And how’s that been?’ I asked diplomatically, instead of screaming, ‘Are you mad?’ at her.

‘Awful,’ Adele replied. The whites of her eyes reddened again, she’d be crying if she could. ‘They don’t let me see her. Since I’ve been in here they’ve brought her to see me once. Once in four weeks. It’s too far, they say, so they only bring her when it’s convenient. I speak to her on the phone but it’s not the same.

‘I miss her so much. And I can tell every time I speak to her that she’s becoming more depressed. More withdrawn. She can’t understand why she can’t be with me now that I need her most. My father and his wife don’t want her there and she knows it. Kam, I want to be with my daughter. I’ve only got a little while and I want to spend it with her.’ She looked at me, her steel-blue eyes beseeching me, asking me to solve this problem for her. ‘I just want to see her. Before, you know.’

No, I don’t know. I’m still playing catch up, remember? I’m not on that page yet, Del, I silently replied. ‘Isn’t there anyone else she can stay with?’ I asked out loud. I knew she had no other family but surely she had some other friends? Anyone but her father and stepmother.

‘No. When I first realised I was seriously sick, I wrote to you to ask if you could take care of Tegan for a while but you never replied.’

‘I never opened the letter,’ I replied honestly. I still had it, I’m sure. Shoved at the bottom of my knicker drawer like all the other correspondence from her – I was too indignant to open them but too cowardly to bin them. They sat in the drawer, growing older and dustier, unopened and mostly ignored.

‘I guessed you didn’t. I tried a couple of other people, but they couldn’t take on such a big responsibility, so it had to be my father.’ Del always called him that, ‘my father’. To his face she called him ‘Father’. Never did she call him ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. There was always a level of formality between them – even now, it seemed. ‘When we moved in he was so hard on Tegan, but I didn’t have the strength to fight him and his wife. If there was one thing I could do differently it’d be to take back what—’

‘Do they still live in the same place, down in Guildford?’ I cut in. I wasn’t going to let her sneak up on that conversation again.

She shook her head slightly. ‘Tegan got that stubbornness from you,’ Del said. ‘She’s exactly like that, won’t do or talk about anything she doesn’t want to. I used to think she got it from me, but no, it’s clearly from you. But yes, they still live down in Guildford.’

‘OK.’ I took a deep breath. Can’t believe I’m about to do this. ‘What if I go down and see her?’


Del’s face brightened. ‘You’ll do that?’

‘I’m not saying I’ll adopt her or anything, I’ll just go see if she’s all right. OK? Just a visit.’

‘Thank you,’ Del smiled. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

‘Will she even remember who I am?’ I asked.

‘Course. She still draws you in pictures. Talks about you. And those anonymous cards and pressies you send on her birthday and at Christmas, I always tell her they’re from you. She always asks when you’re going to come back from holiday.’

‘Holiday?’

‘You left so suddenly I told her you had to go on holiday for a long time. Because then she’d think you were coming back. Neither of us could’ve stood it if there wasn’t at least the hope that you’d come back,’ she said. Her eyelids suddenly shut and stayed closed.

Anxiety twisted my stomach as time ticked by but she didn’t open her eyes. The machines were still rhythmically bleeping so I knew she wasn’t . . . But what if this was the start of it? What if this was the decline into . . .

Del’s eyelids crept apart until they were thin slits, her sallow skin was greyer than it had been when I arrived. I was tiring her out. I should go. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with her. Be with her. Just in case . . . I wanted to sit here all day. All night. For ever.

‘I’d better go,’ I said, forcing myself not to be so silly. I couldn’t do anything here. I’d do more good by bringing news of her baby. ‘If I’m going to see Tegan today I’d better be making tracks.’ I stood up, hoisted my bag on to my shoulder.

‘Give her my love.’ Del’s voice was as weak as tissue paper. ‘Tell her Mummy loves her.’

‘I will,’ I said. ‘Course I will.’

I paused at the doorway, waiting for Del’s reply. I got nothing. I turned to her and saw from the slow rise and fall of her chest that she was asleep. I watched her sleep for a few moments, fancying myself as some kind of guardian angel, watching over her, keeping her safe. Again I told myself off for being silly, then I walked out of the room. Walked out of the room, out of the hospital and into the nearest pub.

chapter three

Adele and I had known each other for nearly half of our lives – fourteen of our thirty-two years. We’d met in the first year at Leeds University, when we were assigned to work on an English assignment together.

I’d internally groaned when I heard that I was going to be studying with Adele Hamilton-Mackenzie. At eighteen I was a staunch working-class citizen and now I was being forced to team up with someone who was clearly from a well-to-do family, what with her having a double-barrelled surname and everything. Plus, she was bound to be a public school wanker with the kind of accent that would make me want to slap her. She turned her blonde head and sought out Kamryn Matika across the class. She smiled and dipped her head at me, I did the same before she turned back to the front. God, I thought bitterly, she’s bound to think the world revolves around her. And she’ll try to order me about. No doubt about it, I’m cursed. And that curse involves me working with some silly slapper with an accent.

At the end of the class, I gathered up my books and pens, planning to make the quickest getaway known to womankind, but as I straightened up from stuffing my belongings into my cloth rucksack, ready to hightail it out of the lecture hall, I was confronted by a slender eighteen-year-old who was dressed like a fifty-year-old in a blue polo neck and blue polyester slacks. I was taken aback by how quickly she’d appeared in front of me, it was almost as if she’d popped out of thin air.

She grinned at me with st