“Sorry,” Angela muttered a few minutes later.

“Don’t worry,” Lilou said. “You have every cause to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. Not at all. I hate everything that happened, but you and Vince...”

“We were close,” Lilou said. “Nothing more.”

“I’m not even sure I care about whatever might have happened anymore,” Angela said. “If something did happen, it was your fault not his. And not even your fault really because of what you are. I can’t hate you, Lilou, because you’re the nearest thing to Vince left to me.”

Lilou felt tears threatening. It was a while since she had cried, and it surprised her.

“We both lost so much,” she said.

“Like you said, you wander hundreds of miles, I sit on my cabin porch. We’re both adrift.”

Lilou was slouched down in the seat and she tapped her foot against the dashboard. “Fuck it,” she said, sitting up and reaching for the stereo. “Let’s have some music.”

Angela laughed out loud, startling Sammi awake behind them.

“We there yet?” the girl asked, befuddled with sleep.

“Yeah, a proper teenager,” Angela said, still laughing.

A tension seemed to have been broken, and though they travelled for a while without talking, Lilou felt happier than she had in a while. Having some sort of direction gave her life a purpose she had been lacking since the Fold closed. And she believed that taking Angela out of the rut she and Sammi had fallen into had moved them both on as well. They would never get over what had happened, but they could all try to take control of their lives again.

When she betrayed Mallian, Lilou lost the best friend she’d ever had, the creature who had been the centre around which her whole life orbited. He was brusque and cruel, and sometimes so embittered that even those close to him suffered the fallout of his fury and rage. She loved him. He terrified her.

She had not realised how much she relied on him until he was gone.