Lottie held on to the one thing of Jamie’s she had – the gift he’d given her when she’d first taken on her role as Portman. The diary of an old Maravish Portman named Oscar Oddwood, who’d written down a personal account of as much history and gossip as he could uncover.

She’d read it hundreds of times, entranced by the exciting world of royalty; every detail in the book had been sucked dry. It was limp in her hands. It wasn’t so fun reading about royal intrigue when you were part of it.

I have to make myself useful. I’ve got to help fix this. Kind, brave and unstoppable!

She couldn’t stop now; she had to keep going.

Lottie wrapped herself up in her dressing gown. Too tired to go for a run like she usually would, she instead located an object that she hoped would help. Lottie found the clue from Haru’s notebook she’d written down. Tracing the numbers gently, she moved down to the Japanese characters. They had been easy enough to translate, yet the words provided no clarity. ‘Sū jū-nen’ it said – or simply ‘decades’ – but what that had to do with her dorm room number or the other three numbers, she had no idea. Thinking of everything they could be, she tapped the page, wondering if perhaps they were simply combinations he needed to remember: 221 – her room, 999 – the police. That left her with the middle two: 009 and 109. Were they safe combinations? Other room numbers? There were too many possibilities and no way to test her theories.

The numbers blended together in a meaningless blur, and the person who could usually solve a thing like this was gone.

‘Jamie’s gone.’ She said the dreaded words out loud, finally admitting it to herself. ‘He’s gone, and it’s just me and Ellie now.’

And Ellie didn’t want her.

A drop of water fell on one of the numbers, the ink spreading like fur. She looked up, confused where it had come from, but when her eyes returned to the page there was another. It wasn’t until a feral sound escaped from her throat that she realized she was crying.

Her face erupted into a mess of snot and tears while she floundered for tissues to clean herself up, only to find the box was empty. With wobbling legs, she pulled herself out of the plush room in a daze of messy grief, searching for something to fix herself. The hurt from Ellie’s rejection and Jamie not being there overwhelmed her. She needed him and he wasn’t there. He might never be there again.

Stumbling out into the hallway, she began wandering through the palace, clutching at her stomach.

‘Miss Pumpkin?’