“I’ll have a quiet night in.” Lou said.

“No chance of that. Remember who will be staying at your house?” Jared said.

“All the better for it,” Lou said, wondering if she wasn’t overreacting and letting this bully from her past exert too much influence on her present life. She was giving up a night out with her friends in order to stay away from Mia. Mia wouldn’t be the only person there—maybe she wasn’t even going. The whole point of the evening was to watch Josephine perform. Mia had nothing to do with it. “Actually, you know what? I’m too old to let the likes of Mia Miller dictate what I do with my life. I want to hear Jo sing. To hell with Mia.”

“Hear, hear,” Phil said, and held up his near-empty glass.

Chapter Five

Mia could hardly believe the number of people that had shown up for Josephine’s gig. Kristin called it an open mic night, but no one else but Josephine would be performing that night.

After their conversation last Monday, Mia had gone on YouTube but she’d only found some very low quality footage of Josephine singing at The Flying Pig near the university campus. All the opportunities she had missed to hear Josephine sing. But she was here now, after her first full week of work at the Pink Bean. Not only had it been a great first week, but she’d had a grand old time cracking jokes with Josephine behind the counter as well. And she’d only been late once because her bus had been stuck in traffic, which was not a common occurrence at that time of the day—about an hour before most people started on their commute. Josephine had promptly offered to pick her up in her car the next morning, seeing as she was spending a rare night in her flat in Camperdown.

Everyone she had met the past week was there. Micky and her partner Robin, whose latte should be called a wet cap—“because she’s a weird American,” Micky had said. Amber and Martha. Caitlin and her friend, Zoya Das, for whom Mia had to organize a farewell party at the Pink Bean in a few weeks. Kristin and Sheryl, of course. And even Lou had shown up, accompanied by the two guys from down the street whom Mia knew to be gay, so they weren’t potential love interests for Lou.

Mia hadn’t seen much of Lou in the past week—not as much as she would have liked anyway. Amber and Micky came in every day like clockwork, but Lou was more elusive. Mia had seen her go past the shop window a couple of times, hurrying along in her yoga gear, looking mightily busy.