If you’d ever asked me to marry you, the sentence wouldn’t have had time to get cold as it passed your lips before I said yes. And, with Nathan, it seemed the right thing to do at the time. Nathan and I didn’t share the furnace of emotions that you and I did, Callum, but I think that was part of the reason I said yes to him. He was … restful. Solid. I don’t mean he was boring – far from it. But I could relax with him. I could talk about music and art and politics and living without explanation or prevarication or apology. I didn’t have to edit my thoughts or line up my words like naked, disarmed soldiers. There were no arguments about proper food seasoning! D’you remember those, Callum? The way you loved your food so damned hot that two mouthfuls were guaranteed to make my eyes water and my tongue catch fire. As for me, I always argued that good food seasoning didn’t begin and end with curry powder and Scotch bonnet pepper sauce. Nathan and I didn’t like overly spicy food, just well seasoned. Sonny reminds me of you, Callum, in a number of ways – but is that number enough? I don’t know.

Callum, I still don’t know what my final answer to Sonny will be. I want to make sure that, if I say yes, it isn’t out of a sense of nostalgia. Does that make sense?

Do I love Sonny?

He was in my life when I really needed a friend.

But do I love him?

He loves me. That means a lot. I want to be loved. Maybe it’s time to let you go, Callum. Pack up the past and put it away in a box labelled WITH ETERNAL LOVE.

Sonny makes me laugh. He’s good to me. He won’t ever let me down. So that’s lots of reasons to marry him – right?

But do I love him?

The question echoes in my head, unanswered.

Another thing that’s giving me pause is the business between Sonny and Troy. I mean, why would Troy accuse Sonny of complicity in Nathan’s death? Why would he do that? As a joke? To deliberately throw a grenade between Sonny and me?

No, because Troy isn’t like that. So why would he say such a thing unless he truly believed it? Sonny reckoned that Troy saw the Whitman Scorpius in the quarry on his land and put two and two together to make thirty-three and a third. A dark blue Scorpius killed his dad so the first same-coloured Scorpius Troy saw after that had to be the car that mowed down Nathan. Sonny reckoned that we just needed to give Troy some time to figure out for himself how ludicrous his accusations were. I’m prepared to do that.