Eve had told her parents she’d handle things herself, and she would keep that promise. As soon as she finished undoing the instinctive panic caused by this morning’s conversation, that is.

She turned up the endless music and drove. The sun faded behind gray clouds, and pre-rain mist soaked into her skin through the open windows, and well over two hours passed without her even noticing. Just when she was beginning to feel the first pangs of hunger, she caught sight of a sign that read SKYBRIAR: FIFTEEN MILES.

“Skybriar,” she murmured over the thrum of cleopatrick’s “hometown.” It sounded like a fairy tale. Fairy tales meant happily ever after.

She took the turn.

Skybriar looked like a fairy tale, too. Its main road unraveled down a gigantic hill, the kind usually found in books or Welsh travel brochures. Mysterious woodland stood tall on either side of the pavement, likely containing pixies and unicorns and other fabulous things. The air through Eve’s open window tasted fresh and earthy and clean as she drove deeper into the town, past adorable, old-fashioned, stone-built houses and people in wellies walking well-behaved little dogs. She spotted a sign among the green, a gleaming blue board with white lace effect around the edges that read PEMBERTON GINGERBREAD FESTIVAL: SATURDAY, 31ST AUGUST. How absolutely darling, and how potentially delicious. Oh—but it wasn’t the thirty-first yet. Never mind.

Another turn, taken at random, and she struck gold. Up ahead, guarded by a grand oak tree and fenced in by a low, moss-covered wall, sat an impressive redbrick Victorian with a burgundy sign outside that read CASTELL COTTAGE. EXCELLENT ACCOMMODATION, DELICIOUS CUISINE.

She was feeling better already.

(Actually, that was a categorical lie. But she would feel better, once she ate, and took a moment to think, and generally stopped her drama queen behavior. Eve was quite certain of that.)

She threw her car into the nearest sort-of parking space—well, it was an empty spot by the pavement, so it would do—and cut off the radio. Then she slipped in an AirPod, chose a new song—“Shut Up and Groove,” Masego—to match her determinedly positive mood, and pressed Play. Flipping down the car’s mirror, she dabbed at her red eyes and stared disapprovingly at her bare mouth. Boring, boring, boring. Even her waist-length braids, lavender and brown, were still tied back in a bedtime knot. She set them free to spill over her shoulders, then rifled through her glove box and found a glittery, orange Chanel lip gloss.

“There,” she smiled at her reflection. “Much better.” When in doubt, throw some color at it. Satisfied, she got out of the car and approached the cute little countryside restaurant thingy through softly falling drizzle. Only when she reached the grand front door, above which sat yet another burgundy sign, did she notice what she’d missed the first time.

CASTELL COTTAGE

BED-AND-BREAKFAST

Eve checked her watch and discovered that it was now far from breakfast time.

“Gabriel’s burning bollocks, you have got to be kidding me.” She glared at her warped reflection in the front door’s stained-glass window. “Has the trauma of the morning’s events killed off your last remaining brain cells, Eve? Is that it?”