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first time I see my own face through someone else’s eyes.
    I’m not like these people around me, and I am not Amarra, but I can wear all my differences without shame.
    Sean puts his phone away. “You look happier,” he says, smiling crookedly at me. “I must be good for something.”
    “I’ve wanted a name, my own name, for so long,” I say, “and I think you just gave me one.”
    “What is it?”
    I smile. Here it is, at last, the one thing that belongs to me.
    “Eva.”

4
Story
    W e get off the train in Lancaster and walk to Sean’s house. It takes us ten minutes, across a bridge, down two cobbled roads, and onto a street lined with old, pretty houses. Sean leads me to the third house from the top of the street, fishing a set of keys from his pocket. I stare at the house in interest, marveling at the fact that in all the years I’d known Jonathan, I’d never seen where he lived. Where Sean lives. Or Erik, or Ophelia. When they enter my world, they leave theirs behind.
    I hope Sean’s mother’s not home. I always got the impression, from things Jonathan would let slip, that she doesn’t like me.
    I’m sure she adores Lucy.
    Something funny happens to my throat when I step into the house and smell the faint scent of cigars. Even nine months after his death, it feels like Jonathan is still here.
    It reminds me of those late evenings at the cottage, when he would sit on the steps with his cigar and Ophelia would sit next to him and fish for a cigarette in her bag and the smell of smoke would waft into the house and mingle with Mina Ma’s hand cream and the tea brewing in the kitchen. And I’d hover in my pajamas outside the door, listening to them talk quietly about grown-up things. Now and then I would hear Erik laugh at something one of the others said. I always waited for that sound. If Erik was laughing, it meant nothing was wrong.
    And one day, just like that, the cigars stopped wafting in through the door and it was only the three of them left. And the sound of their voices was different, no longer an old soothing lullaby but something new and, at first, strange.
    It’s been a long time since I’ve missed Jonathan this fiercely.
    “I know,” says Sean, like every thought is written clearly in my expression, “I can never walk in without it hitting me either. I think my mum lights his old cigars sometimes.”
    “It must be hard letting him go.”
    “I don’t think anyone ever really lets go of the people they love,” he says, putting his keys down in a big bowl by the door. “You’re living proof of that, aren’t you?”
    “But is that the right thing to do?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe there’s no right answer.”
    I think about that. “No, I guess not.”
    “Anyway,” says Sean, gesturing vaguely at the room around us, “this is home. We—” He cuts himself off, watching my eyes drift across the bookshelf and settle on one volume in particular.
    “Don’t even think about it.”
    It’s the novel Frankenstein , and it’s utterly forbidden and it’s so beautiful I want to snatch it off the shelf and read every last word.
    “You can’t expect me not to think about it when it’s right there staring me in the face.”
    “I can hide it if you like,” says Sean, unmoved by my piteous, pleading eyes. “You can’t break that law. You are not allowed to read it. The Weavers would have my head if I let you. And God knows what they’d do to you.” He crosses the room and plucks the book off the shelf. “So you’re pronouncing it E -va, then? Not A -va?”
    A terribly unsubtle attempt to change the subject, but I let it go. “She was more of an Eva than an A -va. And I am too, I think.”
    He cocks his head at me. “I think so too. I can’t wait to see Mina’s face when you tell her.” He grins wickedly.
    I stick my tongue out at him, but have to admit I’m slightly anxious about Mina Ma’s reaction. Naming myself goes against everything that is expected of me. How will