The Valium fug is wearing off and I’m getting a grip on my body again. The sunset cuts in through the open windows in reds and oranges. I open and close my hands in this weird, compulsive way, and it’s almost like I’m a boxer. There’s a determined bounce in my walk as I pace the few clutter-free patches of living-room floor and make my way upstairs. The sea could come pounding in and I’d be able to fight it off. Nick can “accidentally” switch on the sprinklers while I’m working in the garden on a chilly afternoon, and sneer and stare to keep me out of the tavern and the chapel, but this is my house. It may be your island, and I might be forty-eight years off the basic entry requirement, but this house is mine. I carry the debt and no one can make me leave until I’m good and ready.

Even with the big, internal pep talk, I hesitate at Lolly’s door, hugging my laptop to my chest like a shivering waif peering into a bakery window. If I keep playing the waif, though, I’ll never get anywhere. I catch myself, leave the starving kid on the cobblestones, and go in to get what I need. I put on a CD—one of Lolly’s, some French guy called Jacques Brel—and look for something to wear.

Rose told me to meet her at sundown, which is any minute now. Fashionably late—that’s what I’ll say if she’s mad. I settle on a dress, knee-length and brown with white and yellow flowers. I actually look okay, a throwback to that granny look from the nineties. Once I’m dressed I almost leave the closet door open, just to be bad, but can’t quite let myself. I take the stupid Post-it off, though, and flush it down the toilet along with the Post-it from the bathroom that says not to put anything in the toilet other than “what it was built for.” So there.