“Are you planning on using your laptop?” She nudged him with her foot.

“Probably not.”

“Can I?”

That got his attention. “For work?”

“For solitaire. Susan made me delete all the games off my phone because she bet me I couldn’t go a week without playing any.”

“Won’t this mean you lose the bet?” Ed Gemmell typed in his password and pushed the computer over.

“You’re not the sort to kiss and tell.” Esther leaned over and gave him a distracted kiss on the ear as she opened up her game.

Even solitaire, chosen sport of the professional procrastinator, wasn’t doing the trick, and Esther’s attention kept drifting out the window. This side of the library faced one of the city’s many parks, where some tiny toddlers were hurling bread with unnecessary aggression at the ducks in the pond.

She missed the days when life had been that simple, when feeding the ducks occupied a morning and it was socially acceptable to nap in public and throw a tantrum when presented with anything unpleasant. Growing up was overrated—all it seemed to involve was taking responsibility for stuff that you didn’t want, like actually having to manage your own time and work out what to eat and when and how you were going to last the week on only the dregs of your wardrobe because no one had done the laundry.

Just as she was about to turn back to her card game, a girl walked right past the window in front of her. Her head was down as she concentrated on her phone, streaks of white layered through a sharply styled beetle-black bob. She wasn’t tall—although the thick-ridged soles of her boots gave her an extra couple inches—and she gave the impression of a spun-sugar delicacy, with slender legs in shredded jeans leading up to a black bomber jacket with a red fur collar.

There was a ring on every finger and a scowl on her face, and Esther thought she was magnificent.

Here, at last, was someone who understood the struggle of the outcast, who wouldn’t mock her esoteric taste in music, who would have an infinite capacity for hearing about heartache.

Someone exactly like Esther’s old friends. Only new.

Without turning away from the window, Esther dragged Ed Gemmell over. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s what?” But he was too slow, and the girl had passed.

“That vision of gothic perfection.”

Ed Gemmell glanced uncertainly at Esther, then at the window. “Are you . . . admiring your own reflection?”

“What? No. I’m not that vain.”

Ed Gemmell turned crimson. “No. Of course not.”

But Esther wasn’t paying him any attention; she was disentangling herself from her chair and pulling on her jacket.