Colette
Pick up the phone, you idiotic fool
Ophelia
Let me wallow in peace
I hear rattling from the door a few minutes later.
I stay silent, refusing to escape the warmth of my duvet.
Except it just keeps going on. And I hear the handle being pushed down. More rattling. Handle again. Some frustrated cursing. Handleagain.
But I just cannot be bothered to move.Rest in peace, Ophelia—killed by the world’s shittest burglar.
Finally, the door unlocks, and I grab my mug, ready to throw it at the head of whoever comes through the door.
The door swings open, and I draw my hand back.
Colette shrieks, and I drop the mug onto the side table just in time. “Whoops. Sorry.”
Concussion avoided, she crosses her arms and takes in the state of me. The biscuit wrapper, the pile of tea mugs. The tissues on the side table, the screwed-up cardboard from when I ran out of tissues and just used the box. “Good grief, Ophelia.”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Absolutely not. Get up.”
“Leave me alone!” I shout, and the false humor I try to inject into my voice doesn’t even begin to cover the sadness.
Colette starts swanning around the place in her long, white trench coat and white fluffy hat, stuffing my belongings into a bag.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going for a girls’ weekend! In London! It’s going to be so fun. We’ll get you some clothes, eat nice food, get away from Sorrowsong for a bit.”
“No.”
“Please? I’d love it, too. And it gives me an excuse to miss my weekend visiting my stepdad. He’s … he’s really found a second wind on the wholechoosing me a husbandthing.”
“I’ll be your husband.”
“I’m very expensive,” she says, putting her twenty-thousand-euro handbag onto my desk as though to prove her point.
“Count me out of the running, then.”
She perches on the bed and opens up my phone, quickly deleting the screenshot of the nasty post about me, and closing down all my apps.
“Where will we stay?”
“I picked thebesthotel, don’t worry. I wouldn’t put us up somewhere bad. The spa is one of the best.”
“That’s really,really, not what I’m worried about.”
“It’s my treat.”
“Colette.”
“We’re sharing a room, so it’s like a sleepover! And we’re stopping at a cute hotel in Sheffield, too.”
