Lara pulls back the curtain to the change room, a smile wide across her face. ‘It fits!’ She twirls in the dress, laughing giddily.

‘It’s perfect!’ Penelope agrees.

‘I never want to take it off!’ She admires herself in the mirror and they discuss how she should style her hair, what shoes she could wear with it, that she’s already got a perfect little clutch to go with it.

Penelope finds herself smiling. She hasn’t had this much fun in a while. She hasn’t had a friend like this before. The only people she’s ever let herself be close to were her mother, her sister and Ty.

Lara shuts the curtain to the dressing room and Penelope pushes off her seat and begins looking through the shop.

‘Oh, look at these,’ she says, holding up a pair of white peep-toe shoes as Lara emerges from the change room. A warm and fuzzy feeling sweeps over her. ‘I bought a pair just like them for my wedding.’

‘You’re married?’

Penelope chastises herself for being so careless. ‘No, I’m not.’

Lara looks at her expectantly.

Penelope feels like she’s about to pull a bandaid off a gaping wound. ‘I called the engagement off a few months before the wedding.’ She hopes it won’t bleed too much.

Lara’s face drops. ‘Oh no! That must have been horrible.’

She can feel the blood rushing to the surface, the pain immediately raw and brutal, like she remembered it. ‘It was hard,’ she admits, trying to keep her voice steady despite it feeling as though she’s trying to balance a book on her head as she walks down a dirt road with potholes. She’s suddenly aware of her heart beating very loudly. She can see Lara’s mind ticking over with questions.

‘How did you go?’ An eager sales assistant interrupts, staring at Lara who is still holding the dress.

The moment is gone. Penelope lets her breath exhale slightly. But Lara glances at her a little wistfully, as though she knows the momentum of their conversation has been lost.

‘I’m going to take it,’ Lara says, handing the dress over, following the assistant to the register.

Penelope takes a moment to stare again at the peep-toe shoes and imagine how she would have looked and what it would have felt like to become Mrs Ty Peterson.

‘Excuse me, is this you?’

Penelope turns to see the girl with the phone. She holds up the phone screen and Penelope sees an old photo of her and Ty locked in an embrace, smiling at each other.

Panic jolts through her. Why would this girl have an old photo of her and Ty? ‘Where did you get this?’