I stayed in the Chancery Hotel for the full week, checking my email inbox every three seconds. King Edward didn’t get in touch. I wept a lot. Then, when my time alone ran out, I went home and tried to pretend I was OK, though I was far from it. So many times I nearly collapsed in a sobbing heap on the floor. I told Adam I was feeling sick and that I was probably coming down with a bug. He believed me and was sympathetic. I felt like a repulsive zombie who had somehow infiltrated a lovely, respectable middle-class family.

Three days after I returned home, I got an email from King Edward—Damon, as I still believed he was, since by now he had been signing his emails “Damon” for more than six months. He apologized for his silence. It was unforgivable, he knew. The reason for it was guilt. I wrote him back a long email explaining why he mustn’t feel guilty—true love was true love and should never be denied, all that kind of rubbish.

His response came straightaway. “You don’t understand,” he’d written. “The man you were with at the Chancery Hotel, the one who drove you wild for hours and then disappeared without warning—it wasn’t me, or anyone you know. He was a stranger.”

“NICKI, IT’S MUM. WHO’S King Edward?”

Involuntarily, my hands clench. Did I really pick up the phone and whisper his name out loud? Get a fucking grip, Nicki. “Oh, I’m just looking at Ethan’s history homework,” I say, glancing down at the failed test on the table in front of me. I must make time to read it, take it in, take it seriously. Soon. “Mum, I’ll have to call you later,” I say. “I’m bursting for the bathroom.”

“Call me straight back, please,” she says. “It’s important.”

“Is something wrong? You sound . . .” She sounds the way Kate Zilber sounded when I first told her I was being followed, the way I don’t want anyone ever to sound when they speak to me. Nothing horrifies me more than that Please sit down because I have some very bad news tone. Please follow me to that room over there in which something deeply unpleasant will happen. It’s never as bad once you find out what the thing is. I’d far rather someone screamed, “A nuclear war’s just started!” in my face, without warning. Why add a layer of presuffering suffering?

“Do you want to have the discussion now, or do you want to call me back?” asks my mother.