Max looks up then and I swear he looks right at me even though I’m hidden by the darkness and the curtain. He’s frowning and looks like a stranger. I step away so I can’t see them anymore. I guess he is. He doesn’t look like the boy I once thought I loved, but then, wasn’t that boy part invention anyway? I guess he always was a stranger.

What will Jack and Sean be if even Max has become a stranger?

I feel warm breath on the back of my neck and freeze in place, scared at who I’ll see if I turn around. I take a deep breath and dive into bed, closing my eyes. But despite my exhaustion, I can’t switch my mind off and my eyes snap back open in the darkness. Even long after Lena has come up and fallen asleep, I lie awake.

THEN

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

October 2006

“Guess what?” Bella bounces into my room and throws herself onto the bed next to me.

“Watch out,” I mutter, scooping up the pages of my essay she’s lying on. “I’ve been working all bloody week on this coursework.”

She nudges me and grins. “Guess what, guess what, guess what?”

“What?” I say, tucking the crumpled pages inside my textbook.

She sits up. “They’ve moved in.”

“Who’s moved into where?”

She rolls her eyes. “The new family—into Dean House.”

I turn away to put the book back in my bag, letting my hair fall over my face. I can see dirt under my nails, still there from gardening at Dean House over the weekend, no matter how much I’ve scrubbed them. That’s it then. No more secret garden.

“Oh, right—the Insanely-Hots.”

“There’s actually three kids—the two boys and a sweet little girl. The boys go to private school.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw them in the village, practically stopping traffic, so I asked Mrs. Wilson about them.”

Of course Mrs. Wilson would know everything. I doubt she let them buy anything in her shop until they’d answered twenty questions.

“Apparently they go to boarding school somewhere near Oxford. How cool is that?”

“I can’t imagine all boarding schools are like Malory Towers.” I laugh at her. She sounds like she’s eight again, pleading with Mum and Dad to send us away to school for midnight feasts and lacrosse matches.

“God, I know that, but I bet it’s better than our crappy school and they are certainly better than the juvenile idiots we have to put up with.”