“My room is on the second floor,” Sarah said. “Follow me.” Adrenalin spasmed through my veins, which was ridiculous because it wasn’t forbidden to walk in the hallways. Still, the stairs seemed to creak louder and the wood of the floorboards seemed less forgiving. Sarah held open the door to her room in a welcoming gesture and I slipped inside. “Vivian will probably come looking for you here.”
“Only if she’s really desperate to slaughter me some more.”
“She wants to help, Lee. You just have to let her−”
“I know. But are you willing to lie to her?”
“Yes. I promised I would hide you and, if anything, I’m a woman of my word.” That’s when I first noticed she bit her bottom lip in the exact same way Claire did. It made her cheeks drop and her chin dimple, giving her soft features a sexy determination.
“What do you mean if anything?” My question surprised her. She waved it off. I sat down on the bed and let the tension flow out of my muscles. I could have murdered a glass of wine. I was knackered. Who knew talking about yourself all day could be so exhausting? Sarah looked at her watch. “I don’t want to keep you from writing or anything else you want to do,” I said.
“Those five hundred words I wrote on you were more than enough for one day.”
“Oh yeah. You certainly did your part.”
“I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier because Vivian hijacked the moment, but I really loved your description of me.”
“Thanks. I’ll take it as the only compliment of the day.”
“Especially that bit about the brooding darkness in my eyes and the secrets resting in the shallow wrinkles of my face.”
“I may have gone a bit overboard there.”
“Do you want to know my secret?”
“Of course, but you already paid your dues.”
“If I tell you now it will be because I want to, not because I have to.”
“You were never obliged. You offered.”
“I felt I had to offer something at the time, you know, to snap you out of your self-pity.”
“Well, I am a narcissistic self-indulgent drama-queen.”
“Those are not my words.”
“Most of them are.”
“But you always have to add something extra to put yourself down.”
“OK. OK. Before we go down that road again. Yes, I want to know your secret.” She got up from the chair by the window and walked over to the bed where I was sitting. She still wore the same clothes as this morning, most of her skin well-hidden under thick layers of fabric. She twisted her wedding ring between her fingers. As she exhaled I could almost smell her nerves.
“From when I was twelve until I was seventeen my parents sent me to Montpellier in France for three weeks during summer, to stay with a local family.” Her eyes searched for mine, I kept hem glued to her lips. “It was meant as a linguistic exchange project. The rest of the summer their daughter, Eliane, would stay with us in Manchester. I would learn French and Eliane would learn English.” The vulnerability in her eyes and the tremble in her lips begged silence of me. She had to say it out loud, if only this once. “We were like sisters, inseparable during the long summer days. We spent all of our time together. Every year in September we cried our eyes out and promised to write every day. You know how it goes.” I nodded. I knew where this story was going. “The last summer, when we both turned seventeen, I had my first boyfriend and something seemed to have broken between us. The ease with which we usually shifted from pen pals to best friends had disappeared. The entire holiday was awkward, a failed search for that bond we used to share. Ten days before she was to leave Manchester, and possibly disappear out of my life forever, she told me she was in love with me. That’s when the pieces slipped into place. She had suffered through my endless lovesick rants about Anthony when I felt I was stuck with her in Montpellier for weeks. And then she saw me with him all the time when she came to ours. That’s a lot to bear for a teenager.” She was silent for a while, lost in memories. “But I was only a teenager myself, I had no idea how to react. Then I made the worst mistake of my life.”

To be continued…