And it did. It explained everything. Jules couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid, hadn’t seen it until now.

Vivian’s eyes widened. “What?”

“You think I’d turn on you, you think I’d throw you away, because that’s the sort of thing you do to people. Right?”

“What?” she repeated, her eyes going impossibly wider.

“No, no, I’ve got it now,” Jules said, still unable to stop talking. Everything was boiling up to the surface now, out of her mouth, and it was too late to put the lid back on it. Why bother? She was as good as garbage anyway, right?

“I just forgot for a little while,” she continued, “what you’re really like.”

“What I’m like?” Vivian sounded disbelieving, even breathless. As if all this was some big surprise to her, like she didn’t even know…

“Yeah,” Jules said, not about to stop now, because what would be the point? “You treat people like things. As soon as they screw up once—just once—you toss them. And you think I could do something like that to you.”

Vivian’s face wasn’t red anymore. Now it was chalk white, almost like what Jules said upset her, but that couldn’t be true because even after everything they’d been through, Vivian didn’t think of Jules as anybody worth keeping around. She could have screwed Stan Oppenheimer on the kitchen table while forcing Jules to take notes, and it would have hurt less than this.

And the worst of it was that Jules had been so stupid, so deluded, as to allow herself to hope. Vivian had said to be honest with her, had implied she’d like to help Jules, had said a lot of things that had gotten Jules’s hopes up for no reason, except that it hurt that much more to have them crushed now.

The kitchen clock chimed the half hour.

The sound snapped her back to reality, and Vivian appeared to wake up too. But she was still pale and trembling, still had an unidentifiable…something in her eyes. Rage. That had to be it. Fury. She was going to kill Jules. Tear her limb from limb because Jules had finally dared to open her mouth and tell her something real.

Jules wasn’t going to listen. Not anymore. She grabbed her clutch from the kitchen counter. “I never thought I’d say this, but Beijing’s looking pretty good right now.”

She bolted for the front door over the sound of Vivian’s gasp. At least she had speed on her side so she could make her escape. Not that it mattered; Vivian didn’t call after her.

Outside, Jimmy was just pulling in to pick Vivian up for dinner. Jules didn’t even look at him as she ran for the nearest Tube station in high heels.