-Chapter 35-

The Things We Lost in the Fire (part 2)

I stopped thinking about getting back to this place when I stopped thinking about tomorrow. Just sort of let it slip away under the sepia filter of the past and filled up my world with the present, which felt like blood, felt like kissing and felt like something real. Once. It's falling through my fingers right now, and I almost expect this place to do the same- like I'm trying to tie knots into raindrops.

This is my home. With it's balcony filled up with fag ends and empty bottles of cheap beer. With it's messy kitchen and the peeling stucco and the mascara stains and the playdough rubbed into the carpet. This is where my sister lives, pirouetting around the house to pop songs, squealing when she finds a spider in the bath and spilling coco pops onto the sofa. This is where my brother lives, stinking up the place with his disgusting foot smell, inviting over his loud mates and tossing bottles off the side of my family. This is where my mum lives. And she loves me. I don't own anything else.

Don't need it. I tell myself. Didn't need it before, sure as hell don't need it now.

"It's been a privilege. Take care of yourself," says Mr Brown as he drives away. It feels like it's sarcasm but he means it sincerely. I can't work out why he'd say something like that though,

I don't have a bag to clutch close to my chest, though I feel like I should. Just the clothes I went into the hospital in. Washed, though I don't know who did that. Don't ask me where my phone is. I can't remember having a phone since....I get visions of a trip back from Cheshire. Joey called. Trick was dead. We went back to Trick's flat. I cut Harry's hair and I think I'd wanted to kiss him even then, though of course I didn't.

Think about it logically....why would Harry Styles go back to your ex-boyfriends flat and let you cut off all his hair?

I focus on the flat. Force my legs to go through the front door. The lift is still out of order and I feel some small slice of comfort from it. The world can spiral out of control, I can be away for...god knows how long, doing...something that's been blotted out by freckles on my brain, but this fucking elevator will never ever be fixed.

Once upon a time I carried a naked boy up these stairs, I think to myself and it even sounds like the start of a tall tale.

My journey up the stairs however is intercepted by something small and fluffy basically assaulting me. Arms come around me, holding me tight by the middle and I just have time to thread a hand through Chantalle's curls before I'm being nearly knocked sideways by an idiot in a tracksuit whispering, "Jesus fucking christ, Tish," in a tearful voice. I can't see for the tears in my eyes but I can just about make the shape of mum running down the stairs and throwing her arms around me too. There in the stairwell, before we've even made it back into the flat, I get to hold my family close to me. My chest hurts and my breathing is still kind of shitty but I want them holding tighter and tighter. At a slight cough from me though, they pull away a little and I can feel my face crumpling up like a tissue.

"I didn't do it Mum," I whisper.

"What?"

"The murders. I never did it. They let me go..."

Mum looks at me incredulously and laughs through her tears before holding me tight again.

"Of course you never. I always knew! Always. "

For the first time in a long time, I almost feel safe.

***

She runs me a bath. As if I'd only gone away for the weekend to some grotty music festival or been, like, back packing or something. It's perfect actually. Or at least it's better than sitting on the sofa, dirty and not quite knowing what to say or to think or to feel. I sit, hunched up in the tub, splashing water over myself and trying to wash everything away.

I can't look at my scars, I won't pick at old wounds and study the scabs. They will heal into non-existence. None of them mean a thing.

Afterwards, in my fluffy dressing gown that smells the way I used to- so foreign now that I'm actually aware of it, we all sit down to watch the telly. Corrie because there's nothing else on and nobody says anything. Joey's eyes are red, he's acting like he hasn't cried, Chantalle is pawing at me like a lovestarved little cat and mum gets a comb from my room, has me sit on the floor between her legs as she sits on the sofa and starts to brush my hair.

"Does it hurt?" she asks softly as she hits a snag.

"It's fine, Mum," I lie. The silence is heavy and I think I'm supposed to say something else. The whole room feels like the breath you take before saying something important, like the point at the end of ellipses... "Thank you," is all I manage.

"It's so tangled; I think this cheap dye's just killed it," she says when she goes back to fretting over my hair. Wonder what she'd have said if I'd come back bald. My hand slips under my dressing gown and I start to itch a little at the scabbing one thats been dug down deep into it.

"And your teeth. Oh lovey, what are we going to do about those? And..." I should have been more subtle maybe because she grabs my arm and pulls back the robe.

"Oh shitting holy fuck Letitia. What is that?" she exclaims when she sees it. Her face contorts and I can see all of my own hot, passionate fury packed into it like the blueprints of the DNA that make me who I am. I jerk my arm away quickly and pull the robe down again.

"A scar," I mumble. "It's fine." Before I pull my head down and fix my eyes firmly on the telly. Not going to talk about it. Not going to talk at all.

Some part of me is terrified, beyond the point of reason that if I talk about it, if I say that a Harry clone made me do it that they'll all tip their heads at me and say 'Who's Harry?'

It'll be real if I don't talk about it. That's all I have left, this illusion that I'm building up in my damaged brain to fill in the dark freckles. I need the illusion. I won't swap it for reality in a thousand years.

***

Chantalle won't go to bed. I could cry from the normalcy of it, falling in love with the way she sticks out her bottom lip and clutches onto my arm. Maybe she thinks if she goes to bed that she'll wake up and I'll have disappeared. It happens sometimes so I can understand her fear.

I offer to read with her in bed. Charlotte's Web- she got it from the school library.

But when we get into her room, I have to pause.

I'd forgotten about the posters. All of the fucking posters plastered up the walls.

Niall and Harry smiling, posing, looking at me. With flat eyes like they could be clones. My hand wraps around my scar through the fabric of my dressing gown and I have to remind myself that I'm okay now, my lungs are better now and I can actually breathe properly though it doesn't feel like it in this moment.

In an instant, Joey rushes in behind me and starts grabbing them."Sorry, Tish, we didn't have time to get ready...we didn't even know you were coming home til this morning," he says frantically.

He'll have to get the calendar too, and the lunchbox and the knock off notebooks from the discount store with the eraser set and the fucking pencil sharpener with Harry's face on it too. And when he's done with Chantalle's room he'll have to go down to said discount store and take all the shit from the shelves there too, and the WHSmith on the high street and the Card Factory and...and...it's never going to go away.

So I may as well get used to it now.

"It's fine, Joe," I shrug. "Just pictures of some boyband. Who cares?"

***

Your name is Letitia Williams You're from South London, you work in a supermarket and you almost went to prison for a very long time for killing your ex-boyfriend. But then you got to go home....

I say it each night before I go to sleep. Over and over.

You do not know this Harry Styles person.

So why do I always dream about him?

***

We take the going out thing a few steps at a time. Onto the balcony to look out at the london skyline and Battersea power station the way that I used to love. Then to the corner shop for a pint of milk. Sometimes it does feel like people are staring at me, whispering I thought she killed people, or carrying guns concealed into coats. I see this one black car around the estate a lot. The kind with tinted windows and sometimes it feels like it's following me.

Try and work things out logically...why would the car be following you?

One Saturday I make it into town just because I can't bear rolling around the house like a quiet little ghost, reminding myself that though I did technically die twice, I'm not dead now.

I'm Tish Williams. I have to try and remember what that's even like.

And okay, so I do take a steak knife out with me, secreted away into the pocket of my coat and I'd be be buggered if someone decided to stop and search me, but the way I see it this is part of the healing process, part of helping to make me feel secure out in public.

Tish Williams used to like pissing around with the makeup in Boots, saving up money for nice shoes and sitting down by the river over on our side of London with a fag and a sandwich. It feels a little empty now, a little lonely, and sort of like I'm retracing the steps of someone who lived and died a long time ago. Like one of those lame tourist walks where the guide talks about Jack the Ripper or Queen Victoria and like how this is the spot where they once took a leak when they were pissed.

And here is the place where Letitia Williams once lost her Oyster card, I hear the tour guide say in the back of my head, historians differ in opinions but the popular notion is that she was so pissed off at Patrick Wilmut for allegedly having it off with 'That Slag Cindy Richards' that she started throwing whatever she had at him before storming off to cry and eat a sundae at the late night Burger King around the corner.

I feel myself slipping into history, little by little.

And here is where Letitia Williams applied for a job, they say when I go into the Superdrug near Victoria station, she was rejected because of a piss poor maths GCSE grade but they said she'd interviewed well and so she started to think she just might have a chance somewhere else with this whole job lark.

I buy some eyeliner. I haven't worn eyeliner in forever though I used to wear arguably far too much of it. At the counter, the girl who's GCSE maths grade was undoubtedly better than mine, is quietly singing along to the song playing over the speakers. I smile at her, try to make it look effortless like he does and she smiles back.

"Like this one?" she asks, assuming it was her singing that had me smiling.

I listen to a few bars, and shrug non committally. "It's alright. Never heard it before."

"Heh. I have to listen to it all day. You must be the first person I've talked to who hasn't heard it before. You been abroad or something?"

She's looking at me too much now. I've gone back to brunette and though my hair is much shorter now, more of a pixie cut than the long straight way I used to wear it, I'm still worried she might recognise me from the papers. I hand over my money mumbling, "Something like that."

She keeps her hand in the till, taking her time over giving me my change. "They play it all the time because of the fire, you know? The Olympic Fire. What killed all those girls. Good thing I like One Direction, you can't escape it."

It feels like the punch in the chest from a dead man that killed me. I jerk my head up at her.

"What?"

"How long were you away for? The fire...oh it was awful-"

"-I know about the fire," I snap. "You've listened to this song...all the way through?"

"Yeah....um....there's a queue," she says, quick to hand me my change now. I shove it all into my pocket with the eyeliner and turn to look back at the whole shop. A woman examining the foundation, a man looking at cough mixture and school kids spraying perfume all over eachother. None of them look brainwashed. They play it all the time. You can't escape it.

This is a good thing, I tell myself as I hurry out of the shop. The world not ending is a good thing. But I'm still stumbling down an alley, pawing at the sleeve of my coat to pull it up and stare at my scar. The scar is real, I can see it.

Try and work things out logically...

But I don't want to. I really really don't.

***

It's called Hand in Hand and really it's pretty schmaltzy. Sort of thing you'd expect from a charity single about a bunch of dead teenage girls as opposed to a song to brainwash the entire world. I don't buy it but I download it. And I listen. Over and over and over and over. Waiting for the moment when my brain turns off or I hear a clue or something.

It's just a song. But my scar is real.

And the nightmares feel realer than when I'm awake.

Smoke in my nostrils, Trick bleeding out from his neck, those girls trying to kill me, Olivia on the fence spike, Niall being shot...

I blink and see nightmares, I blink and one night I'm in the kitchen, on the floor, scratching and scratching at the one carved into my arm to make it bleed all over again so that it doesn't heal and go away. As I realise what I'm doing, I pull my hands away quickly and stuff my hands into my mouth, so that when I sob it won't wake anyone up.

"Tish?"

Too late.

Joey stands in front of me, swathed in the moonlight coming in from the windows in the living room, giving him this kind of ethereal blue outline. He's wearing a t-shirt and his boxers, blinking at me sleepily.

"It did happen didn't it Joey?" I finally break down and ask.

"Oh fuck." Joey spots my arm and runs over, sitting next to me and grabbing me by the wrist. "Yeah, Tish, it did."

"Because sometimes....I'm not really sure what to think," I whisper.

"Ah jeez, Tish," Joey looks deeply deeply uncomfortable. " I just assumed you'd talk to me about it when you were, like, ready or whatever....course it was real. Look at your scars. Look at mine." He pulls up his shirt and I see the knife wound when one of the Liam's stuck him as well as the cut on his knee from the crash when I lost my teeth.

I reach out and touch his stomach.

"We earned them," I whisper. My little brother wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into his chest, kissing the crown of my head.

"Yeah we did."

"And this is real too? It is supposed to be over?"

Joey swallows. He doesn't really know how to answer that one. He's scared too, I realise that now. Living in the same limbo that I am. So instead I take his hand and he takes mine, wrapping our hands all up together. "We're gonna take care of you now, Tish. As long as it takes for you to come home."

***

In the morning, I blink into life to find someone sitting on the edge of the bed. Instinctively, I pull myself immediately, ready to run and fight and survive. But it's only my mother in her nightie staring at me. Or maybe saying that I will need to run, because she looks utterly livid.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demands.

Last night, I realise, a little slower than I'd like but quicker than it would have been before. Joey must've spoken to her.

"I didn't actually know I was doing it," I mumble. "I'm not...all into self harm or whatever. Seriously. It was just a-"

"Not that," she snaps. "Why didn't you tell me about things before? Why won't you talk to me now?"

"I wanted to protect you," is all I can say to that. And it's the truth. "I know I failed...but I really really did try." I say it softly to try and placate her, but if anything I just seem to make things worse.

"That's not your job Letitia!" she shouts.

"I couldn't-"

"Yes you could! I'm your mum; that's just what happens!" she's getting hysterical. "When you get in trouble you talk to me."

"About this, Mum? Seriously?" now I pull myself up and frown back at her.

"About everything. You never talk to me. You never have. Pulling away, running away, even now you're avoiding me..."

That's true enough I suppose. It's funny because all I could think about on the run was seeing her, hearing her voice and having her hug me. But now I'm home...she's right....I'm avoiding her. What's wrong with me, I wonder? Pulling away when I want to be held close, not trusting anything, not even my own mind.

"He was just the same. Bloody idiot. Deciding I can't help either of you before you've even asked me. Making choices for other people, you don't have the right, Tish! You sure as hell don't have the right to get yourself killed."

"I'm sorry, Mum. I did it all wrong! Okay?" I finally just snap and admit. " I fucked up...again. I'm the Queen of Fuck-Up Land and long may I reign!"

She looks at me, teeth clenching and unclenching before she puts her hand to her temples and laughs.

"Yes you did. And I'm so proud of you."

" Being your daughter is very easy if fucking up is what makes you proud," I mumble into my sheets. She leans over and pulls me into a tight hug.

"Shut up you daft cow," she tells my shoulder. "And don't fucking swear."

"Okay," I pull away and smile a little, touching my hair nervously as I let out a deep breath I feel like I've been holding onto for forever. "I can tell you...if you wanna hear it I'll talk about it. I won't pull away."

***

The black car is there, parked up near the estate when I leave for my morning jog- well morning jog like two blocks and then walk wheezing for about twenty minutes afterwards- and I'm done ignoring it and done trying explain it away and pretend like it isn't here for me. Tish Williams confronts things head on and Tish Williams is coming home.

So I pretend like I'm just casually jogging, past the car when I stop abruptly and wrap angrily on the window.

"I know it was real, you fuckers." I spit. There is no sign of movement from inside the car. The window doesn't roll down and I could well be crazy and just talking to an empty car. But it doesn't feel like it. " I remember everything and I always have. You really shouldn't have sent me home because I'm going to tell everyone, every single person on the planet what you did."

The car just sits there. Nothing happens and I grit my teeth.

"Oh you think no one will believe me? The psycho killer? That why you let me go?"

I smile, cup my hand over the glass and shout my trump card into it. "I still have a Zayn, you know. His corpse is in a parking garage...it's a little mouldy, but he's still recognisable and DNA doesn't lie does it? Tell me where Harry is or I will start instagramming. You've got twenty four hours"

And with that, I start my jog again. Behind me, the car engine roars to life and the black car drives away.

***

I'm not bluffing either.

I go to the parking garage the next day, just like I said I would. It's been cold so hopefully the neighbours haven't complained about the smell or called the police. It seems to be fine though, still shut up the way that Niall and I left it before everything went to hell. I'm fiddling with the locks when I see the black car pull up about a thirty yards away. The window rolls down and a woman leans out.

"I think we should chat," she calls.

"Don't want to chat. Tell me where Harry is or shoot me in the back of the skull right here in broad daylight." I point to the back of my head and hear a heavy sigh from the woman.

"Tish get in the bloody car."

I just point harder.

"Letitia Williams you're alive. Harry's alive. The single has been out for three weeks and no one is brainwashed, the world didn't end. How can you possibly believe that The Spindle is still operating?"

This makes me turn ever so slightly, frowning. All this time I've just assumed that the black car and the shady mystery of this whole post hospital situation is down to the Spindle. Only now does it occur to me that it could be someone else.

"If you want to know where Harry is then get in the car."

Apprehensively, I slide into the left side of the back of the car. The leather interior is plush and roomy and a smartly dressed woman is next to me, her silvery blonde hair pulled back into a bun. She signals to the driver to go in a circle and clearly hasn't got much patience for small talk as she regards me with pursed lips before beginning,

"You know by merely existing those boys are in direct violation of a twenty year old U.N treaty?"

Clearly my answer is, uh...no, I didn't know actually.

"Human cloning is illegal. Everywhere. Every single country on earth. Human cloning is illegal on the moon and every asteroid orbiting the earth, it's illegal in your grandmother's wardrobe and the ice deserts of Antarctica. Not allowed. Can't do it. Pick a new science project little Timmy because this one will land you in Guantanamo Bay," the woman rants.

"So imagine what happens when clones are made here. In the United Kingdom. Not just for research purposes but as a direct act of aggression. Under the nose of the British Government...involving senior members of the British Government," she presses her fingers to her temples as I add quietly,

"I-I don't think I have to imagine it, actually. I'm living it."

"Quite," the woman says again. "Basically, Miss Williams, your boyfriend is the biological equivalent of a nuclear weapon."

Good thing Harry didn't hear that. He would have definitely made a joke about his penis.

"A nuclear weapon that I now have to disarm. And that's before I even begin to get into what the Vatican would say and all the Islamic extremists, right wing christian nutters in the Deep South and the angry angry Buddhist monks. Some people really don't like it when you play god," the woman sighs before leaning forward and fixing an intense gaze on me. I feel like I'm about to get a telling off from my strictest teacher.

"So you squawking and screeching on about instagram is really not helping. We were always going to have to prevent an international incident and McNamara and the rest knew it. Hiding in plain sight for all this time"

"Where is he?" I ask. After the fire started, I never saw McNamara again- part of me has been wondering if that's why this was all still able to happen, because he was still alive out there somewhere.

"In some insect hole. He doesn't matter. He's just a drone," says the woman. She laughs a little at her own joke and a flash of something triggers in my brain. A woman in her fifties with blonde and grey hair. I've seen her before. But not like this. Her hair was all straggly down her back, her makeup was sloppy and clownish compared to how it is now. Also she'd been totally vacant and brainwashed at the time.

"Fuck...I know you," I whisper.

Ruthie. Theo's wife- or so he'd said. The one who'd been giggling and singing One Direction songs. I knew there was something off about that set up- no one's house is that tidy. No one's.

"You pushed me down the stairs!" I hiss. "You tried to kill me!" I fumble for the handle of the car door, ready now to get the hell out, but I find the door is locked and that when I turn around Ruthie has pulled out her gun.

"See the thing is, I have a gun....easy....easy," she adds when I start banging on the window. "I just meant that if I wanted you dead. Truly dead, do you think I would push you down the stairs of all things?"

Honestly I have no idea. I've tried looking at things logically and it's not exactly led me right in the past, I just glare at her.

"I thought you'd been compromised. Theo wanted to use you but I thought you would be safer neutralised."

"Dead."

"Or injured. You walked into a Spindle facility and came out unconditioned. I assumed you'd made a deal, or you were wearing a wire. I still thought you were with them for a very very long time."

"What changed your mind?"

"Why does that matter? The only thing that matters is that I did."

"Tell me," I insist. "I can't trust you unless you tell me."

Ruthie throws her hands up in the air and sighs heavily again. " Fine. I looked into the scientists at that place. Found Sarah July. Or more accurately Sarah July's son. Ricky, he's nineteen."

This makes me frown harder still. I don't know anyone called Ricky, let alone can think of a reason why this would lead Ruthie to believe I wasn't some double agent.

"Ricky was on the donor register for a good portion of his life. They struggled I daresay to find a suitable donor- antibodies, cross matching...science....things. And then last year he wasn't on the register anymore. They found him a kidney. Must have been a good match; he's going to university. Oxford, the clever boy."

"Holy shit. Why did Doctor Ian Roslin remove and harbor subject .001?" I whisper, echoing the question I was asked at the facility. "He's Roslin's son. Ricky is."

"Not officially. Not on his birth certificate- Dr July is married to somebody else.But it's like you said, DNA doesn't lie."

"So...he took Harry because he wanted his son to have a kidney. That's it? No secret experiments or super powers. Roslin took Harry and hid him because he was a match."

"He was also the skeleton key to an unlimited number of clones," Ruthie points out. "But it would never have been any of the others. He put all his best work into creating Harry because he saw potential in his DNA. He wanted his son to get the best kidney possible. And when Sarah July guessed she felt compelled to help you. The kidney saved your life too. Not bad for a kidney."

If you see Harry, tell him Sarah July says thank you. More than he can possibly know. That's what she said to me. Right before I escaped. I wonder if he knows, if they've told him that he's the reason a nineteen year old boy gets to have a life. My hand goes to my head and I fist through my hair as a headache hits me.

"It's a lot of information to take in. They told me about your injuries," says Ruthie. Her mouth twitches before she adds an, "I'm sorry." And I genuinely think she means it.

"I need to see Harry," I tell her, turning around. Hope she can see from my eyes that I do. I really truly do.

"I'm afraid that isn't possible."

"You said you'd tell me where he was. You promised."

"And I will tell you where he is. But you can't see him."

"Why?"

" He's with us. He's helping us avoid an international crisis. We can't have people asking too many questions. It's all so public.

"But-"

"-It's over, Tish," says Ruthie flatly.

"How can it be over? I could help you," I whisper, flaring my nostrils as I fight not to cry. Don't cry and try to look strong, like somebody's hero, Letitia Williams "I killed all the clones didn't I...I did that and I-"

"And you're a seventeen year old girl with dodgy lungs and brain damage. There's nothing left for you to do. "

That comment stabs me like a knife in the heart and I think Ruthie can see it all over my face because her expression softens exponentially.

"You were very brave- you did well. But now you've been hurt. Go home, concentrate on your health, be with your family; you owe it to every other girl who was in that stadium to think about all the things you have that aren't Harry Styles. Live your life and stand down Letitia Williams."

The driver stops and I realise we're back outside of my estate. Back to where my real life is.

***

"Well fuck you! You can stuff your fucking job," I yell angrily into the receiver before reminding myself it's not sensible to throw your new phone off the balcony. Even if it appears to have been made in the stone age and probably could withstand several nuclear blasts.

"So...take it you're not going back to work," Joey asks me, swigging from his beer bottle as I sip my own cheap wine from the glass. Well, not so much sip as glug down like it's water and I'm in the desert.

"No," I say darkly. "Apparently after all the sick days I took saving the fucking world I'm too unreliable an employee. Aka no one wants to go to work with the suspected spree killer. Even though everyone's supposed to know I'm innocent now....fuck."

"You shouldn't have even tried. It's still way too soon if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you. I'm fine," I say shortly. "And unless they've started letting people pay for food with fag ends and bottle tops, I've got to get another job ,like ,yesterday."

"Just go on the dole like mum. They'd probably even give you disability. That's supposed to be loads more than unemployment anyway."

I fix him a look that could curdle milk. "Why would they give me disability benefits, Joe?"

"Coz....you know."

I drink even more of my wine, "Is consistently rat-arsed drunk considered a disability these days?" I ask which makes Joey snigger. He goes to light a cigarette and offers one to me. Still forgetting, even after all this time.

"How many more times?" I whimper as I watch him get that first heaven sent blast of nicotine. "I can't. My lungs filled up like the Titanic after that fire. Can't smoke anymore, can't do that to them. I jog now. That's the only addiction I need."

Joey raises his eyebrows at me and sighs a little too happily when he puffs out.

"Shut up. I hate this too. Just let me suck on the filter or something when you're done."

It's the right thing, but goddamn sometimes it doesn't feel like it. No cigarettes, jogging, pretending everything's fine and getting back to normal. Sometimes it works, it really does. But others, when your boss tells you to take a hike and you can't even smoke afterwards....

"Fuck's sake. Who knew a couple minutes of being dead could fuck a person up for so long afterwards? Who knew that saving the world lands you in all this shit?"

Sighing, it feels hard to summon up any of my righteous fury. Instead, I look out at London, following the path of an airplane that must have taken off from Heathrow. At this time, from above, it's London that must look like it's full of stars with the lights all shining the way they are. Maybe that's how it is if there are gods in heavens looking down on us, maybe they only see the lights that shine a little brighter than the rest. Maybe me and my drab little corner of the earth comes up invisible.

And maybe that's okay. Maybe I can be happy this way.

But sometimes I do wonder if he's looking up at the sky too.

I wonder what he thinks of when he sees stars.

"I still just wanna see him, Joe," I sigh as I watch Joey's smoke rings curl up into the air. "Then I know I could get back to me again like I know I have to. If I could see him once... talk to him, I'd finally feel like these last few weeks are it for me now. Even if it was only to say goodbye."

I'm never going to see him again. The fact dawns on me. It doesn't sting or throb or make me feel sick to my stomach.

It's more like missing a kidney.

But at least it was real, I tell myself. At least we loved each other and saved each other. And no one can ever take that away from us.

It's all ours.

***

One, two, three...

three beans topple neatly onto my blouse and leave behind elegant puddles of tomato ketchup soaking into the fabric. Shit, shit, shit. As if I wasn't late already- trying to eat beans on toast before a big job interview is probably ill advised enough to begin with. But in a hurry, that's a whole new world of stupid.

I have two blouses for job interviews. The other I wore on Tuesday for the one at the late night Burger King and it's still drying on the rack on the balcony but since I don't have much choice in the matter I'm just going to have to hope it dries on the tube or doesn't look too obvious underneath my blazer.

Shoving toast into my face and pulling off the dirty shirt, I nip outside onto the balcony in my bra and skirt, with the intention of grabbing the half wet shirt and running out the door.

I can't help but frown though when I see a black car sitting on the road outside, just underneath my flat. Maybe it's Ruthie, checking up on me, maybe something else. I can't be sure and I also can't be late. I wonder idly if the top secret super spy wouldn't mind giving me a lift to a Tesco's petrol station in Vauxhall so I don't miss my interview.

I'm sniggering at the mental image right up until the point when I see who's getting out of the car.

My heart starts to pound and my face is literally completely stuffed with an entire slice of toast.

"Hi," a voice calls up from below.

I don't say anything- I can't. I just grab one of Joey's discarded beer bottles from the tiled floor and chuck it off the balcony with force.

A/N: Is it Harry or not?

One more chapter to goooo!!! I can't even deal with it :B Please, please keep voting!