I’m a bit of a mess, to be honest. I barely slept last night, and I was up well before dawn packing my bags. Athena’s revelations on the flight over have hit me hard, and I’m still struggling to process, to recalibrate everything I thought I knew to be true. I’m also nervous as hell—nervous that Marlowe will hate me, that she’ll be furious with me for overstepping. And I’m scared of confronting her in this new reality, of having the truth of her suffering laid bare for me.

Luckily, my brother’s impressive girlfriend takes the lead, marching me briskly down endless corridors and stopping to ask staff members for directions when we get ourselves lost.

It’s when we get to a cheery nurses’ station decorated with the words THE HEART HEROES UNIT in colourful paper letters that I suspect we’ve reached our destination. Again, Athena takes charge, giving Tabby’s name to the duty nurse. I watch in trepidation as the woman points towards an open-doored ward.

‘Tabby is in bay nine,’ she tells us with a friendly smile.

‘Come on,’ Athena says impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’

I follow the noise, which escalates as we enter the ward. Fucking hell, this is utter carnage. Machines beeping and kids screaming and a hum of chatter—it’s like a refugee camp or something. Why the hell didn’t they get a private room? I look around in abject horror, attempting to process this hellish overstimulation of colour and noise.

And then I see them.

At least I think it’s them.

The third bed has a tiny blonde girl in it. She’s asleep, and she looks frail as fuck. The oversized headphones she’s wearing dwarf her small face.

Next to the bed sits a woman, her upper half slumped over the bed. She too looks to be asleep with her head in her arms, long blonde hair tied in a messy topknot.

Marlowe.

Even from here, she looks utterly defeated.

The two of them are still and quiet at the centre of this total fucking circus, as if even the chaos around them couldn’t stave off the demands of their exhaustion.

I take them both in, and I know for certain that I will never be the same again.

CHAPTER 44

Marlowe

I’m sucked rudely back into consciousness by a gentle hand shaking my shoulder and a familiar voice whispering in my ear.

‘Marlowe? Babes, it’s me.’

I jerk upwards with a shocked gasp from where I’ve been face-planted against the bed, adrenaline flooding my system. Athena? I look up and to my left, and there she is, a vision of well-groomed serenity in the midst of this zoo.

‘Oh my God!’ I croak. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. ‘What are you—how did you⁠—’