“Oh yeah, poor Jack and Sean. I don’t get you, Bella. After Nicole died, you were so anti-Jack, and yesterday, you went off giddy as hell at the idea of spending the day with them.”

Bella kicks free the stone I’ve been reaching for. “Oh stop it, Tess,” she mutters. “You’re such a bore sometimes.”

Her words sting.

“Do you think they’ve told Greg yet?” I blurt out. “Someone needs to—before he hears it from some village gossip.”

She looks up at me and frowns. “Are you still going over there? Tess…you have to stop. It looks bad, a fifteen-year-old visiting an almost forty-year-old man living on his own.”

My cheeks burst into flames. “We’re only gardening. God, stop treating me like a child.”

She shakes her head, still frowning.

“And you weren’t so bothered about seeing him yourself when he gave you that camera, were you?”

“But I’m seventeen and…”

I roll my eyes. “Oh wow—two whole years older. Yes, old woman, I guess that makes the world of difference.”

She smiles at my sarcasm. It’s reluctant, but it’s a smile.

“So what are you going to do?” I say before she can lecture me any more. “About the wedding, if you’re so dead set against it?”

She looks at me and then away, smiling over my shoulder. I hear the crack of a twig breaking and whirl around to see who my sister has invited to the party, heart simultaneously lifting and falling at the sight of Max and Lena.

Lena looks at me and laughs. “Jeez, Tess, the look on your face!”

“What are you doing here?”

Lena glances at Max. “Bella sent an SOS. So we fled.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

She smiles. “Probably. But I’m eighteen, Max is seventeen—they don’t keep us penned in anymore. Our friends will cover for us until we get back.”

It strikes me in that moment as horribly sad that, if anyone notices they’re missing, the only people who’ll care will be teachers. Their parents, off on the other side of the world, haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. It also makes me wonder how they can sneak out so easily today but not yesterday. Did Jack even invite them? I don’t think he was expecting me to tag along, either. I think he just wanted it to be him, Bella, and Sean. The thought makes me nervous and uneasy.

“We can help you stop the wedding. It’s simple,” Lena says, lighting a cigarette and passing the packet around to the rest of us. “We’ve done this before, right, Max?”

Max shakes his head. “Our parents are still together.”