13

There was a soft knocking at the door. I rolled over, unwinding myself from the tangle of sheets I’d straitjacketed myself in. The door opened at the same time my eyes did and I saw a bare-chested Alex in his shorts, standing there with a steaming mug in his hand.

‘Tea?’ he said.

‘Happy Birthday,’ I replied, sitting up. The room spun a little as I did so, Alex’s bare chest was like a flashing billboard in Times Square. My eyes were drawn back to it again and again, before my gaze fixed on the shallow dips on either side of his hips that were swallowed up by the waistline of his shorts. It was all I could do not to trace the shadows with the tips of my fingers.

He grinned at me a little sheepishly, setting the tea down by my side.

‘I should be bringing you tea in bed,’ I said, though really I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind Alex serving me breakfast in bed every morning for the rest of my life . . .

He crossed over to the windows and pulled up the blinds, letting in ribbons of sunlight. Then he moved to the wardrobe, giving me a simultaneous view of his front, reflected in the mirror, and his muscled back. I bit my lip as I took in the line of his spine and the soft shadow of his ribs under his skin. He pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and slipped it on. I sighed in disappointment.

‘Did you sleep well?’ he said, throwing me a glance.

‘OK. You?’

‘Not bad,’ he said, already out the door. ‘If you want to take a shower or anything, be my guest. I’ll fix breakfast. Jack’ll be over in about half an hour.’

I got out of bed. My legs were aching from yesterday’s run. I glanced in the mirror opposite. The sunburn had eased and I had some colour across my face now, a few freckles making their comeback on my nose, but still I looked tired. No, not tired, sad. I looked sad.

I would be leaving soon and it didn’t look like I’d ever be coming back. And Rachel would sink her manicured claws into Alex and that would be that. My life would be over.

Jack arrived while I was getting dressed. I heard him talking to Alex in the kitchen and followed his voice down the corridor.

‘She can’t come back. It isn’t safe. It’s never going to be safe. Not until we’ve caught him.’ I froze mid-step. It was Jack talking.

‘That might not be for a while,’ Alex replied. ‘You can’t stop her. Lila’s got a mind of her own. Maybe you should tell her the whole story. I don’t like keeping it from her.’

‘You know we can’t. Rachel would never allow it.’

My heartbeat was so loud they must have heard it. The conversation swerved off in a different direction.

‘Coffee?’ I heard Alex ask.

I walked into the kitchen.

‘Hey,’ Jack said, looking shifty. I hoped his job never required him to do undercover work.

‘Hi,’ I answered.

‘You ready for breakfast?’ Alex asked, serving up some bacon and eggs onto a plate and pulling out a stool for me.

I contemplated him for a second. He was avoiding my eyes. I climbed onto the stool. What was the whole story? Who was the him they were talking about catching? Why couldn’t Jack listen to Alex and just tell me? And why wouldn’t Rachel allow it? Who the hell was she to tell them what to do?

Only their boss, I remembered with a sinking feeling.

As soon as I said goodbye to Alex and the door shut behind me, I could feel the pull, that elastic band around my heart being stretched again. How was it going to feel with a whole ocean separating us? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Down in the car park, Alex’s motorbike stood at an angle as though leaning over to be petted.

Jack saw me gazing at it lovingly. ‘I hope you enjoyed your first ride on that thing,’ he said, ‘because it was also your last.’

Actually I’d had two rides on Alex’s bike, but I didn’t pull Jack up on the technicality – maybe Alex hadn’t told him about me running off.

We walked over to Jack’s Audi which he beeped open. I slid into the passenger seat and tried to spot what one hundred and twenty thousand dollars bought. The speed gauge went all the way to two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Maybe that was it. I wondered if I could convince Jack to show me some of that speed. I scanned the dash. There were two buttons without icons on them. Bass? Treble? On/Off? Or something more exciting, like an ejector seat? I considered pressing one but realising how that might play out if they weren’t audio balance buttons gave me pause for thought.

We swung out of the car park and into the blazing sunshine. I turned my head, trying to spot the black car that had been waiting on the street last night. It didn’t seem to be there anymore.

A few minutes later, I checked again to see if it was behind us but nothing. I chewed on my bottom lip, trying to figure out how to broach the subject once more.

‘Jack,’ I eventually said, ‘if I leave next week, when can I come back?’

He stepped on the gas. ‘Lila, you’ve seen what’s happened just in the few days you’ve been here. You need to stay in London, where you can’t be a target. If you’re here, I can’t keep you safe.’

‘But you don’t need to. I can look after myself,’ I said, with something approaching conviction.

Jack glanced over at me with one eyebrow raised, snorted and then looked back at the road.

I glared ahead. I needed to tell him. It was suddenly so obvious. If I told him and Alex about my ability then maybe they wouldn’t feel they had to keep protecting me. They might relax and let me stay. It was a long shot, and there was still a chance they might totally freak out and send me off to some secure unit for testing, but I had to rely on the fact that one of them was my brother and the other was, well, Alex, and he never overreacted to anything.

Jack had parked the car and turned the engine off before I even realised we were back at his.

‘Sara’s coming round later,’ he said, unlocking the door to the house. ‘She thought you might like to get ready for the party together.’

I smiled. It would be good to spend time with another girl, and I might be able to get more out of Sara than I’d been able to pry out of Alex. I looked at the clock on the wall. I had ten whole hours to kill before I saw Alex again. It felt like five centuries. But possibly it was just long enough to figure out a present for him, as in a real present, not one of the imaginary gifts I’d like to give him. It might also be long enough for me to figure out a way to tell them both about my ability without either of them running from me screaming.

The present-giving problem was easily resolved in the end. In the back of my diary was a strand of brown leather Alex had once given me – a hastily pulled-together goodbye present from when I left five years ago. I’d worn it on my wrist for approximately a week in London before my new teacher told me to remove it or lose it. I figured that Alex might appreciate the return gesture. There was a risk that he might look at it and wonder why I was giving him a worn-out piece of leather as a birthday present, but I’d take it. I had no money other than a pile of loose change, so it was either the strand of leather or a popsicle.

The other problem I thought I’d solved too. I figured that it was all about the way you looked at things. I could sell my ability to them as something freakish – or I could sell it to them as a superpower. The image in my head shifted from Alex staring at me in horror and running away, to him looking at me the way Jack looked at Sara, and asking me out on a date. A superpower might just put me on a par with Rachel.

I had it all planned – I would tell them tonight. After the party. The only minor spanner in the works was the fact my ability wasn’t so super and neither was my control of it. Still, I’d cross that bridge when I had to.