Halfway through her second drink, Susan sensed a shift in the atmosphere. Her back was to the door, but the identity of who’d entered was written in glee across Esther’s celestial visage and punctuated by an alarmed flare of Daisy’s nostrils.

“Ed Gemmell’s here!” Esther waved far too enthusiastically.

It seemed Ed Gemmell had returned from the library with more than reading material. He had returned with a friend. Just like that, his inexplicable shiftiness toward Susan became entirely explicable.

Susan stood up. “Time to go.” No explanation, no empty excuse. Susan made straight for the door as if there was nothing in her path.

“Good day, Sus—”

She flashed a hand up, cutting the platitude short.

The point of coming to Sheffield had been to leave the past where it belonged—in Northampton. It wasn’t supposed to follow her 134 miles up the M1 and transfer into the same university.

There were too many people who’d crossed Susan for her to whisper their names before sleep, like a prayer, but each one was carved into her heart and pumped through her body like blood. A towering cowboy who’d once stood in front of her for the entire set of a bluegrass cover band. The girl from preschool who’d eaten the banana onto which Susan’s mum had lovingly drawn a princess riding a dragon and clearly labeled with an arrow that said Susie P. Her first boss, who had made the mistake of thinking that to be outside the law was to be above it . . .

Enemies were easy to accrue, but Susan had only ever had one nemesis, and his name was McGraw. Ed Gemmell’s new best friend.

McGraw’s presence had a very different effect on Esther. Ever since this mahogany-voiced vision of mustachioed manliness had transferred to Sheffield a couple of weeks into term, Susan had refused to reveal exactly how it was the two of them knew each other. Despite begging, bribing, pleading, and prompting, Esther had gleaned nothing more from Susan than a hint at shared “history.”

While Esther was an open book, Susan was a locked vault, and here was the handsome, laconic key.

“Hi, well, fancy seeing you here!” Ed Gemmell popped up in Esther’s vision with a double-handed wave hello.

“Actually, we’re really sorry, but we’re leaving.” Daisy lifted Esther up off the sofa, completely disregarding the fact that Esther had yet to make significant progress with her mulled cider or her interrogation of McGraw. “Susan’s right. Esther really needs to change out of her pajamas.”

“What? Susan never—” But Esther could only impart a somewhat apologetic wave in Ed Gemmell’s direction before Daisy frog-marched her away.

“Was it something I said?” Ed Gemmell asked, looking down at the table of half-finished drinks.

McGraw clamped a hand onto his friend’s shoulder. “I suspect it’s something you brought with you to the bar.”