To a young girl who hated the life she was living and was struggling to find her place in the world, it was an invitation. If she could be someone else when she was acting, what was stopping her being someone else in real life?

She thought about that moment often, and she was thinking of it now as she sat on the porch swing on Milly’s deck, safely out of view.

She wasn’t used to doing nothing. When she wasn’t on set, she was reading scripts, memorizing lines and letting herself sink into the character she was to become. There was no time to be herself.

She’d had her first big break at nineteen while she was still in college and an agent had seen her performance on stage. Since then, she’d worked nonstop. She’d spent so much of her life playing other people she no longer knew who she was. Acting roles had brought her accolades and adulation. Being herself was unlikely to have the same effect.

Who was she when she wasn’t acting? And would anyone really like that person?

Unsettled by her own thoughts she stood up and headed to the kitchen to make herself a coffee.

Maybe she’d delve through Milly’s books and find something to read. She had decisions to make. She needed to work out what to do, but she didn’t feel ready to confront her reality.

She picked up her mug and was halfway across the room when she heard a rap on the door.

“Milly?”

Nicole froze as she heard the male voice. Milly had said that no one came to her cabin, but apparently today someone had decided to do just that. That was unlikely to be a coincidence, surely?

Panic closed in on her, and she tried to reason with herself. No one had seen her arrive. It wasn’t possible. Or was it? No, this wasn’t someone looking for her. It was someone looking for Milly. And when they didn’t get an answer, they were going to leave.

She heard the sound of the door opening and the voice came again, louder and closer.

“Milly? Are you there?”

He was inside the boathouse. Actually inside.

She hadn’t locked the door. How could she not have locked the door?

The mug slid from her shaking hands, sloshing boiling water over sensitive skin. She registered the scald, but only dimly because right now she was far more afraid of something else.

He was in the house. In the house. And she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t suck air into her lungs. Desperate, she grabbed a knife from the block on the kitchen counter, but her hand was shaking too much to do anything with it.