Emma squeezed her crutches closer to her body as though they might prop up her courage too. She ached when she looked at Zeb, his curly hair falling into his face, his eyes wary. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Just because he’d been running away didn’t mean he’d posted the note or done the other things. Just because he’d been evasive about his friendship with Freya didn’t mean he had more to hide.

She jumped as she registered the long-haired man behind him. Her crutches almost gave way. Robin. He seemed to be smirking at her—or was she imagining that? If she glanced down, maybe her chest would have flattened and her skinny knees would be knocking, and there’d be an Alien Girl cartoon shoved down the front of her top.

She found herself shuffling backward, almost clobbering her mum in her urgency to get away. Julie looked at her in surprise, and Zeb rushed forward. Emma couldn’t stop shaking her head. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said to Zeb, the words spilling out before she could filter them. She flung a glance at Robin. “Either of you.” That panicky sensation climbing up into her throat again.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked.

“Please, Mum,” said Zeb. “Let me explain.”

“I don’t even know what to say to you, Zeb.” She wished she’d had more time to decide how to handle this. Her emotions were spiraling.

“She asked me to do those things,” Zeb said. “That’s how it started.”

“What?” Emma glanced around. “Who?”

“Freya.”

The mention of her name made a police officer turn their way. Emma seized Zeb’s arm. “You’d better come inside.”

She pushed him toward her flat, aware of her mum and Robin looking uneasily at one another, never having met before.

“Dad needs to hear this as well,” Zeb said, making Emma freeze.

She couldn’t have Robin in her flat. Sitting on her sofa, drinking from her cups . . . no.

“Please, Mum,” Zeb begged. “I want to talk to both of you.”

“Emma.” Robin spoke for the first time. Hearing him say her name made the hairs stand up on her neck. It used to shock her when Andy called her Emma rather than Alien Girl. It was like an alert: Was he going to be nice to her that day? Or was he lulling her into a false sense of security?

She remembered Robin whispering her name into her ear on the night they’d made Zeb.

“We could sit in the van, or go somewhere else, if you’d be more comfortable,” he said now.