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Chapters (37)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Jenny Valentine
  3. Dedication
  4. Novo
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. Novo
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. SIXTEEN
  22. SEVENTEEN
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. Novo
  35. Acknowledgments
  36. About the Author
  37. What’s next onyour reading list?

We got out. The wind whipped my hair into my mouth and back out again, turned Mum’s jacket into an airbag. The house with Henry Lake in it stood out as much as we did, a stain on the neat white terrace like a rotten tooth. All manner of crap was crammed in the trashcans and stuffed in the uncut hedges. The roof was pockmarked with moss and weeds and bird shit. Some clever kind of tree had taken root up there, getting a head start on all the others, and I had some respect for that. Henry Lake’s elongated shadow scuttled across an upstairs window. A gull on the chimney pot opened its throat and cried, launching itself into the air above our heads. I heard the sail-crack of its wings, saw its rain-cloud underside as it circled, head tilted, gimlet-eyed, watching. I hate being the center of attention. I could feel the blood needling in my fingers, the jittering bones in my ears. I liked our old life. I liked our last apartment. I knew how to get there from my friends’ houses, from all the places we went out. I knew where every single thing was kept. Me and Mum and Mark were happy there, sort of, until we weren’t. It had been an okay place to call home. And it didn’t have an old stranger curled up in the middle of it, like a maggot in a peach.

“I hate this,” I told her.

“Me too,” she said, and she tried to put her arm round me, mark the occasion like we were in it together, but I dodged out of range and left her hanging, because in that moment I felt like my eight-year-old self with that ball of string, and that feeling made me angry.

If we were back there, arriving at Henry’s again, if it was happening now, I would do so much better than that. I would remember that sometimes, the thing you’ve dreaded the most can be the actual making of you, the thing you would never end up trading for all the money or fame or love or good fortune in the world. I would take my old self to one side and tell them straight out that one of the best things about the unknown is that it’s 100 percent guaranteed to surprise you. Every time.

FIVE