‘Fuck it! If this is going to get me back to the future, so be it!’ She thrust her hand into her pants for a final time and let all sorts of Ben images—Ben at what passed for a beach in England, Ben reading, Ben being secure in his own masculinity, Ben cooking, Ben running his hands through his hair—flood her mind. With each picture, she relaxed more, and more, and more, until—

Ohhhh.

Uhhhh.

Eeeeehh.

She felt it coming. That swelling feeling deep inside. She was about to explode into a thousand pieces. And before she did, just a second before she came undone, she let out a wailing, breathy, ‘Somebody to loooooooooove!’

She kept her eyes clamped shut, feeling pleasure drip down her body and into her toes. Then she slowly peeled her eyes open, one eye at a time. She looked around, hoping to find her poky Angel flat with its stained white walls, and the Marilyn Monroe print above her bed. But instead, all she saw were cream-coloured couches, a velvet occasional chair and a very expensive throw rug.

Damn it!

Evie sighed, frustrated, and went to wash her hands. She walked into the kitchen, and stopped in her tracks. Hugo’s laptop. It was poking out of the leather satchel he had left sprawled on the island bench last night. Evie hesitated for a second, then she made her decision. She’d just check. So she could put all of this nonsense behind them, once and for all.

She opened the case and flipped the laptop open, entering the password that Hugo had given her when he had wanted her to read his producer’s notes: Bunny1234. She carefully typed Charlie and Dot into the search icon in the top righthand corner of the screen, and let out a sigh of a relief when No results appeared. She did the same search of his recycling bin folder, and no deleted files appeared there either.

Finally, she clicked into Hugo’s email, which was thankfully already sitting open in a tab. She avoided looking at any new emails, not wanting to pry any more than she had to. She quickly typed Charlie and Dot into the search bar. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. She did the same in his Trash folder. Nothing there either.

There was no sign of this so-called story that Chloe claimed Hugo stole. But could he have deleted the files like Chloe had claimed he did from her laptop?

Evie stared at the screen, tapping on the mousepad. Where else could she look?

‘Evie?’

At the sound of Hugo’s voice, Evie jumped, slamming the laptop down. She swivelled towards him.

Hugo frowned, peering over Evie’s shoulders. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He walked over and quickly scooped his laptop into his arms, holding it firmly against his chest.