Maybe the problem was Mika’s perpetual good humour, which was alien to him and even worse than Ian’s boundless energy. That had to be it. She was so aggravatingly, relentlessly sunshiney. And, like the actual sun, she seemed determined to nurture every green or living thing in sight. It was absurd. In fact, just yesterday, he’d gone outside to speak to Ken and had found her kneeling on the front path, spoon-feeding a bee. A bee. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to save the bees. Of course he did! Yet for some reason, Mika naming her pets after folkloric witches, Mika spoon-feeding a bee, Mika’s eyes dancing with mischief? Made him want to move to a flat with glass walls and a city skyline view and exactly zero woodland sprites. Zero.

Yes, he was aware that this was unreasonable.

He hadn’t always been this glass-half-empty. As a rule, he didn’t like to look back into his history, but he cast his mind there now, dodging the thorniest, brambliest parts of his memories. He was After-Jamie, but there had been a Before-Jamie once and that was where he went, to that little boy in Belfast. Before-Jamie had had a beloved goldfish, and a brown school satchel that his mother had lovingly embroidered with quotes from his favourite books, and a father who’d pick him up after school and put him straight on his broad shoulders.

Before-Jamie’s glass had been more than half-full. He hadn’t looked for the worst in people. He’d trusted that even when things went to hell in a fucking handbasket, everything would turn out okay in the end.

After-Jamie knew better.

Even so, it was possible that resenting someone for having a staggeringly lovely smile was a tad over the top.

Almost as if he’d summoned her just by thinking of her, the library door creaked open a little further and Mika poked her head around it.

“There she is,” she said, shaking her head at Circe, who barked lovingly in response. “I’m sorry, is she bothering you?”

“No, she’s fine,” Jamie heard himself say.

What—and he could not overstate this—the fuck? He’d just had the perfect opportunity to politely rid himself of the dog, the dog’s owner, and the dog’s persistent fur. Why hadn’t he taken it?

Mika stepped farther into the room, obviously interested in the library. Brilliant. That was all he needed. He watched her with what he hoped was a polite but forbidding expression.

It didn’t have its intended effect.

“How does the library work?” she asked curiously, craning her neck to look up at the second floor of old, crinkly books. “No one browses in person, obviously, so do you have to post a parcel every time a kid requests a copy of Peppa Pig’s latest adventure?”