With no Bentley waiting for me outside the airport, I took the tube back into town and my suitcase lagged behind me like a temperamental toddler as I fought the flow of human traffic streaming over London Bridge. I’d always loved these big city landmarks – striding through town made me feel like I was living in my own TV show, Westminster on one side of me, Tower Bridge on the other – but today I didn’t know how to feel. A sad side effect of not having felt much of anything for far too long. I was dreading seeing Stew, I missed Juliette already and try as I might, I couldn’t stop thinking about Evan. So much of my life was suddenly up in the air and the uncertainty of it all ate away at my bones.

‘Should have stuck around for that last tarot card,’ I mumbled, burying my face in the upturned hood of my parka to protect my ears from a bitter November wind.

The glossy red door of Sarah’s office seemed to have an invisible forcefield all around it, repelling me as I walked down the alleyway. Was there anything in my contract that said I had to return my phone and all the borrowed clothes in person? Maybe I could leave them all on the doorstep and ring the bell in a very high stakes game of knock-a-door-run? No. This was one of those things that had to be done, whether we liked it or not, and it just wouldn’t sit right with me if I didn’t do it in person. Plus, there was still a sliver of a chance I could talk Sarah into giving me a good reference. Juliette was alive and mostly well, and I had delivered her to the jet in one piece. Admittedly, I’d completely failed to get her to the Crystal Ball, but who wanted to split hairs?

I knocked on the shiny wood and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Was she even there? I checked the time on my phone, re-read her terse email confirming the drop off and knocked again.

‘I’m coming!’ yelled a voice on the other side of the door, followed by the clatter of footsteps and locks clunking and clanking into place. ‘Yes?’

Sarah was a mess.

Her glasses were covered in smudges and behind the lenses, her mascara was most certainly not where it was supposed to be. What had once presumably been a tidy ballerina bun had devolved into an out-of-control top knot and there were at least three different phones ringing in the office.

‘Oh, hi,’ I said, remarkably less concerned about the fact I was wearing mismatched socks than I had been twenty seconds earlier. ‘I’m here to drop off—’