It’s funny. I never really thought about what this would be like. I started when I felt the presence of her mind inside my own. Not because it was a bad feeling. It was just nothing that I’d ever experienced before—having two people in my head, me and her. I had a moment’s panic at the thought of every private part of myself being open to someone else’s scrutiny. I knew it didn’t work that way. At least, Galfreya had told me it didn’t—she only saw what the other person allowed her to see—but that didn’t change the feeling of utter vulnerability.

If it had been anybody else, I would have just closed down my thoughts and shut her out. But this was Galfreya, and alien though the sensation of having her inside of me was, I trusted her. And I knew I had to do this for Jilly and Lizzie. Especially for Jilly. Because as my memories rose up—

There. The first time we met, two scruffy part-timers working in the post office, thrown together because we were the only oddballs amongst our very straight coworkers. We literally bump into each other in the door to the cafeteria, and I find myself smiling at this small woman who seems to be all wild curly hair, looking up at me with those electric blue eyes of hers, wearing this huge, oversized sweater that hangs almost to her knees. She looks as scared and out of place as I feel, and we have this weird, unexpected moment of frisson where we know, without question, that we’ll always be safe in each other’s company. If she hadn’t asked me to go for a coffee with her after work, I would have asked her, and asking girls to do anything—even something so innocuous—wasn’t something I really did back then.

There. We’re outside a subway stop on Lee Street. I’m busking, playing my fiddle, and she’s sketching the passersby. We’re still scruffy, still the odd ones out when it comes to the rest of the world, but we have our own little world together where none of that matters. She turns to me and says, “Geordie, me lad, if I’d never met you, I’d have had to make you up, because I couldn’t live without you.”

There. Coming home from a late gig—it’s maybe three in the morning—I see the light on in her loft and go up the stairs to knock on the door. The pure pleasure on her face when she opens the door wakes an answering joy in my heart, a familiar treasure that I never take for granted.