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screeched, You have betrayed me.
    ‘Well, perhaps I can come over, but I have an appointment at noon and I don’t know how long it will go on for.’
    ‘An appointment with whom?’ Mum asked.
    Well, I was going to have to tell them sooner or later.
    ‘I have an appointment with my life.’ I said it matter-of-factly, expecting them not to have a clue what I was talking about. I waited for them to question and judge, and planned how to explain it was just a random thing that happened to people like jury duty, and that they didn’t have to worry, that my life was fine, absolutely fine.
    ‘Oh,’ Mum said in a high-pitched yelp. ‘Oh my goodness, well I cannot believe that.’ She looked around the rest at the table. ‘Well, it’s such a surprise, isn’t it? We are all so surprised . My goodness. What a surprise. ’
    I looked at Riley first. He was looking awkward, eyes down on the table, while he ran his finger over the prongs of a fork and softly spiked it with each one in a meditative state. Then I looked at Philip; his cheeks had slightly pinked. My grandmother was looking away as though there was a bad smell in the air and it was my mother’s fault but there was nothing new about that. I couldn’t look at my father.
    ‘You already know.’
    Mum’s face went red. ‘Do I?’
    ‘You all know.’
    Mum slouched in her chair, devastated.
    ‘How do you all know?’ My voice was raised. Silchesters didn’t raise their voices.
    Nobody would answer.
    ‘Riley?’
    Riley finally looked up and gave a small smile. ‘We had to sign off on it, Lucy, that’s all, just to give our personal approval to it going ahead.’
    ‘You what?! You knew about this?’
    ‘It’s not his fault, sweetheart, he had nothing to do with it, I asked him to get involved. There had to be a minimum of two signatures.’
    ‘Who else signed?’ I asked looking around at them. ‘Did you all sign?’
    ‘Don’t raise your voice, young lady,’ my grandmother said.
    I wanted to throw Mum’s bread at her head or mush lobster cocktail down her throat and perhaps that was obvious because Philip appealed to everybody for calm. I didn’t hear how the conversation ended because I was racing up the garden – walking fast, not running, Silchesters didn’t run away – and getting as far away from them as possible. Of course I hadn’t left without excusing myself from the table, I can’t remember exactly what I’d said, I’d mumbled something about being late for an appointment and politely abandoned them. It was only when I closed the front door behind me, raced down the steps, and landed on the gravel that I realised I had left my shoes on the back lawn. I hobbled over the stones, biting the inside of my mouth to stop my need to scream, and drove Sebastian at his top speed down the driveway and to the gate. Sebastian backfired along the way as a kind of good riddance , however that’s when my great escape ended because I reached the electric gates and was trapped. I lowered my window and pressed the intercom.
    ‘Lucy,’ Riley said, ‘come on, don’t be angry.’
    ‘Let me out,’ I said, refusing to look the intercom in the eye.
    ‘She did it for you.’
    ‘Don’t pretend you had nothing to do with this.’
    ‘Okay fine. We. We did it for you.’
    ‘Why? I’m fine. Everything is fine.’
    ‘That’s what you keep saying.’
    ‘Because that’s what I keep meaning,’ I snapped back. ‘Now open the gate.’



CHAPTER FIVE
    Sunday. It had loomed over me all weekend like that giant gorilla over that building in that film and finally it had plucked me into its evil clutches. I’d had a night full of various ‘me meeting life’ scenarios. Some had gone well, others not so well, one was entirely in song and dance. I had every conversation imaginable with life – in that weird dream way that made absolutely no sense when you woke – and now that I was awake, I was exhausted. I pressed my eyelids together again, squeezed them