‘Come here, you,’ I mumbled with a grin, pulling her tiny thirteen-year-old wrist towards me. We’d spent the night in the suite of a fancy hotel in Mayfair, paid for by my soon-to-be in-laws as a girly treat. The three of us – me, Freddie and Adzo – had arrived yesterday and settled in for gossiping and giggling and doing silly dance routines for social media in our matching dressing gowns to celebrate my last night as a single woman. It had been perfect – and I had only cried twice. I was excited to get married, but I can truly say that if I accidentally fell into a sinkhole before I got to the church then I would die having had the most beautiful twenty-four hours ever. Everything had been magical.

Adzo fussed about with the tousled brunette waves curling down my back – another thing I entrusted to nobody but her – and I lowered my voice to tell Freddie: ‘You can still stay over as much as you want. This doesn’t change anything.’ I nuzzled into her neck and looked at our reflection in the giant mirror before us. ‘Alexander loves you.’

‘Even on Saturday nights?’ she asked.

‘Bear, I don’t think you’re going to want to hang out with your fusty old sister on Saturday nights for much longer.’

‘I will.’

I scrunched up my nose, making her giggle. ‘We’ll see about that.’

Adzo stepped back, gave me the once-over, and downed the last of her mimosa – a visible sign that she was satisfied with her morning’s work. She was gorgeous, her Black cheekbones heightened even more than they naturally sat because of how she’d used the highlighter cream, forcing the light to bounce off her face as though she was somehow lit from within. Her dark eyes were lined like a cat’s and her braids piled in thick coils on her head. Thank heavens she wasn’t walking down the aisle with me, for surely all eyes would have been on her.

She’d actually refused to be a bridesmaid before I’d even had chance to ask. ‘I don’t go in for all that,’ she’d stated, after I first showed her the ring. ‘Don’t even ask me, okay?’ I’d chuckled and agreed. Typical Adzo. She doesn’t do what everybody else does. A lot like Freddie, actually, she marches to the beat of her own drum.

‘Are you year eight, or year nine, Freddie-Frou?’

Adzo had quickly caught on that nobody called each other by their proper given name in our world. Everyone was Doo this or Frou that, a bear or a bug or a piggy-poo. Freddie responded to say that she was just starting year nine.