She felt a sudden urge to tell Avery and Charlie what was going on, or at least part of it. They were supposed to be her friends. She should treat them the way you were supposed to treat friends. Maybe, if she did that, she’d feel normal for a few seconds.

“My dad is seeing someone.”

There was a moment of shocked silence.

Avery dropped the nail polish back into her bag. “You mean, a woman?”

“Of course, a woman. Grief doesn’t make you change your sexual orientation.” She wrapped her arms round herself. Why did she feel so angry and moody all the time? Maybe she should join a gym. Take up kickboxing or something, instead of snapping the heads off those closest to her.

Avery sat down on the bed next to her, a gesture that reflected the impact of this news. “How do you know?”

“He brought her home.”

“OMG you met her?” Charlie abandoned the makeup and flopped down on the bed, too. “What’s she like?”

Smiley, Izzy thought. Smiley, pretty and absolutely nothing like Izzy’s mother. Her mom would never have worn bright colors, or let her hair tumble wild over her shoulders the way Flora did. Flora was arty, a little bohemian and—

Cool.

Izzy sat, drenched in panic. Where had that thought come from? Flora wasn’t cool, she was a homewrecker.

“Izz?” Charlie prompted her. “What’s she like?”

What did it matter what she was like? They were asking all the wrong questions.

She wished now that she hadn’t told them about Flora, but it was too late to take the words back.

“I met her for a couple of hours, that’s all.” But Flora had made her dad smile. Several times.

Izzy hadn’t seen her dad smile properly in a long time. He delivered forced smiles of course. The ones that said he was doing okay. She knew all about those smiles. They originated from the outside and took so much effort your face ached. But spontaneous smiles? Smiles that came from inside, and were genuine? She hadn’t seen one of those from her father before Flora came to dinner.

“Does she have kids of her own?”

“I don’t think so.” But she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about Flora and she’d been so panicked and threatened to see another woman in the house she hadn’t asked many questions.

“Probably doesn’t have kids, or she would have talked about them. But let’s hope she at least likes kids. Was she kind to Molly?” Charlie caught Avery’s eye. “What? We’ve all read the stories about wicked stepmothers. And Cam’s stepmother really is a witch. She brews all these herbs. It’s seriously creepy. I never drink anything that hasn’t come out of a sealed can when I’m over at his place.”