Crouched behind the front door, Jem listened to the car turn in a slow circle on the gravel. Its tyres hit the pothole Ferg had been promising to fill for the last four months, the front tyre bouncing through and then the rear. The engine idled at the gate, as if Rosie was giving her the opportunity to come out again and make this right, but the car didn’t pause for long. Jem heard the rev of acceleration, and within seconds, there was nothing but the sound of the clock ticking in the living room and the fast, irregular wheeze of her breathing.

“It’s for the best,” she whispered. “It’s for the best. You’ll be safe now.”

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that she and Rosie had never stood a chance. They had barely taken the first steps in their relationship, and she had almost got Rosie killed. Her luck hadn’t been this extreme with anyone else, but then she had never met anyone quite like Rosie, who had barged into her life, shaken everything up, and given her a glimpse of what she could have. Before Rosie, she hadn’t realised how lonely she had been or how happy it was possible to be, and none of her previous breakups had ever felt like this. They had been difficult and miserable and occasionally downright bizarre, but they had never felt so cruel.

She flipped the cap off her inhaler and took two puffs. The medicine worked quickly, allowing her to stagger upstairs to the bathroom, where she knelt by the toilet and vomited what little she had eaten for her breakfast.

She groaned, coughing bile and phlegm into the bowl. Her stomach and chest ached, and she felt dizzy enough to lean her forehead against the toilet seat. Closing her eyes, she pulled a towel from the radiator and used it to cushion her head as she curled onto the floor.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Long enough to wake with goose-pimpled arms and chattering teeth. She could practically see Rosie standing in front of her, full of righteous indignation and warnings of pneumonia. It would have been worth the scolding just to have her there, but Jem couldn’t undo the damage she had wrought, and she left her mobile where it was, burning a metaphorical hole in her coat pocket.