STAR ATTRACTION - CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1 

The bright winter sun was dazzling. The intensity of the cold afternoon and the everyday bustling noise of this mediocre little town immediately became a welcome relief of normality to my senses, after being submerged in a dark room, watching both intense tragedy and human resilience unfold before me over the past two and a half hours. Napkins from the popcorn was all I had on to deal with the tears and wipe away the mascara that I just knew was streaking my cheeks and inevitably made me look like a broken panda, and then I tried to tuck the mascara-streaked napkin I had in my hand away without anybody else noticing.

I wasn't usually any kind of sap at generic, formulaic Hollywood disaster films, but this one had rather managed to hit a little closer to the heart than I had ever expected it to. Oh, not the devastating plane crash or the outlandish pyrotechnics – I've thankfully never had the pleasure. But the turmoil of the film, the characters involved, the tragedy of the victims and the survivors – all people you came to know well throughout – had surprisingly overwhelmed me, this time.

I was rarely moved by films, and I had to grudgingly put my reaction singlehandedly to the impressive, immense talent of the actors involved – particularly the three key leads powering the story, because it certainly hadn't been the storyline or script, which had been barely more than a generic Hollywood stereotype of a disaster movie. Iconic movie megastars identical twins Sebastian and Caspian De Carr, along with their co-star – the sublimely beautiful Hollywood favourite Kate Whittaker – had somehow transformed a mediocre script and shallow characters into genuinely believable people in a heart-wrenching disaster movie that seemed, at first, to start out as an adorable romantic comedy. It shouldn't have worked – but their characters' relationships with each other made the decent into catastrophic disaster all the more shockingly horrific and poignant, and finally, the key to their very survival.

The characters and story arc spun around in my head in a way that usually only books could do. Movies rarely impressed or moved me enough to analyse, break down, dissect, and understand all its components, and somehow, this one had done just that. Authors of books or creators of any written word usually didn't have the luxury of having a third party bring theTVir words to life for them – unless you maybe counted their editor. The writer of this script seemed to have hoped for the best in writing what should have been drivel, but in the end was transformed into genuinely believable, even hard-hitting, words by three of the best craftspeople in film acting. Responses, unwritten physical actions and reactions, facial expressions, tone of delivery, silent reactions, all added to what the words had to offer – all so shockingly perfect and real, you couldn't even question what they were saying. On paper, though, I knew it could not have possibly looked half as impressive, and mostly empty, regurgitated drivel, and that the predominant of writers would have to come up with things far more interesting and deep for such a story to have worked in any novel they were writing.

Being a lifelong obsessive bookworm and a newly-hopeful, aspiring writer myself, who was smugly about to finish my second degree, so I this time in English Literature, I always found books were a far more fascinating window into other people's worlds and imaginations than the film industry ever did. After all, books were worlds of endless interpretation and boundless escapism, from the insightful and sharp prose of Shakespeare to vast extremeness of Hardy's world of the Wessex countryside, and the sweet tongue-in-cheek existence of Austen's characters.

I actually loved it so much, it was the sole reason I had jacked-in a very financially stable career as a specialist contractor in IT data analysis and database architecture in London to study the subject seriously, and also the reason I found myself walking out into the rather depressing half-hearted, meandering streets of Willowfall-by-Bough, instead of the hustle-and-bustle of Leicester Square, which I missed dearly, still, even after three years away from living there.

Escaping this mundane littleP town had once been my biggest achievement. Swapping its mediocre existence, for the world of IT in London, I had become a successful Database Analyst for many years for very good money. I'd had the dinkiest little studio apartment I almost liked and was actually very proud of – read: a small room with a window, two kitchen cabinets that had a sink and hotplate-oven combi thing on them, and a tiny bathroom – in Camden Town, and I'd had a good life. That was until the lure of the written word became too great, and I realised I wanted to desperately do the one thing that I was truly passionate about before I turned thirty.

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but in the end, I made it and diligently managed to save up enough to pay for my English degree without needing student loans – it was enough for a down-payment on your average small house, or a small studio apartment in London, but I wanted to get on with life afterwards, not have the burden of unnecessary debt around my neck if I didn't need to. So, instead of finding a better place to live as I made more money, I paid my relative pittance for my studio and saved everything up instead. After a few years I had more than enough, and I gave up everything to go and get my degree – which then brought me back here, to Willowfall, to study full-time, and temporarily giving up my other passion of working with computer systems for a semi-lucrative income on a steep upwards trajectory... and possibly my sanity.

The Bottom line? I loved books and writing more than I loved computers, so I made that sacrifice for them. I loved the fact that in books every character lived in my imagination alone – each image and voice was unique to my own mind, and only I could see and hear them in this way, with no one else sharing these images or perspectives. In a film – this one and any other – it was simply a story told that you watched with a hundred other strangers who saw, heard and experienced exactly the same thing for the last two hours, and hardly the same. Yet, surprisingly, this one had pulled on heartstrings that were usually reserved for a really great novel – despite the fact it had been about a noisy plane crash with a death-defying ditch into an ocean in the dark night where, of course, all the ridiculously overpaid, albeit incredibly gifted, stars of the production had walked away from it, and the romantic pair – in this case, Sebastian De Carr and Kate Whittaker's characters – bouncing off into the sunset with everlasting love.

In all honesty, the only reason I even went to see these films was from a misplaced sense of duty and loyalty to an old friend. Other than that, I really wasn't generally interested in the whole Hollywood industry and what it egocentrically thought it had to offer. I didn't even bother watching anything else each time I went to see one of these silly generic, predictable films and spent a small town fortune on tickets for a very uncomfortable seat. If only Willowfall-by-Bough had a decent theatre – I would much rather go and see a fabulous play anytime. Master Shakespeare and his cast of characters had a lot more to offer than some director of studio with a large production investment out in California.

Unfortunately, my cinema companion and much-younger university friend, Melissa, had very different ideas regarding the movie industry. As we walked back through the town, she was bouncing along beside me, chirping away as to how much she had enjoyed the film. She couldn't stop talking about how fantastic she had thought the headline stars, Sebastian and Caspian De Carr, had been – rather to my irritation. The least said about those two incredible and flawless Hollywood entities, the better. It's best not to ask why.

"They are so brilliant!" Melissa gushed with unrelenting enthusiasm that only someone barely out of their teens could surely still muster, whilst I unsuccessfully tried zoning her out. "You just forget they're not even real people – the characters, I mean. Sebastian De Carr and Kate Whittaker are just such amazing actors!"

"Especially since you really like Sebastian," I teased with a wry smile, ignoring immediate touchiness I felt at the mere mention of that man's name.

"So?" Melissa retorted, grinning inanely. "It would be abnormal if I didn't – the man is insanely gorgeous!"

I immediately sidestepped the observation. "Well, Sebastian has always been a good actor. Fooled everyone every time."

"Oh my God, that's right – you knew them! It's really quite exciting, you knowing a real-life movie star," Melissa beamed. "You're so lucky."

What the hell, Lisa?

I'd been so busy sidestepping how gorgeous she though the man was, I veered directly into the path of the biggest thing I needed to never, ever mention.

My lips pursed together grimly and I inwardly groaned. Lucky was the last thing I felt. Actually, it wasn't even on the list of things I felt. I kicked myself for abhorrently stupid throwaway comment, bringing attention to a fact pretty much no one in my current sphere of friends or acquaintances knew about me, whatsoever. It was one of the things in my life I really wanted to truly forget. Amnesia should be a pill you could just take sometimes, not something randomly bestowed on people who usually didn't want it.

"Hardly lucky," I grumbled. "Is it really that exciting?"

"It's very exciting that you went to school with Sebastian and Caspian De Carr! It's like such a huge claim-to-fame!"

I bit my lip and smiled tightly at her, definitely regretting ever mentioning knowing the De Carr twins whilst I had been in high school to Melissa. I was also desperately hoping that it wouldn't go any further – I absolutely didn't want anyone else to know.

Without warning, Melissa suddenly stopped at a shop, her attention clearly grabbed by a magazine with a picture of the twins from the film on the cover. The caption below made me inwardly wince when I saw it simply read, "No Crash Landing For De Carr Twins", and right then I immediately made a mental note to remind myself to never, ever apply for writing jobs at such atrocious publications that used such horrendous puns as headlines.

Unfortunately, the lack of writing talent hadn't deterred Melissa from reading it, or buying it. She excitedly picked up the magazine, and paid the young man behind the counter, before shoving her nose in it and reading the article. I shook my head in quiet despair at the woman's delight and obsession with the home-grown Hollywood idols. Of course, the hypocrisy was that I wished I could say I couldn't see the attraction – but I couldn't do that, because if I did, that would make it probably be the biggest lie ever told in all of history, ever.

The problem was that ever since I had first seen Sebastian De Carr on my very first day at Willowfall High School, I had been rather overwhelmingly smitten with the boy in my class with the charming smile and sparkling blue eyes. He almost immediately become the most popular boy by the end of our very first day – his adorable good looks were already clearly obvious, and his genuine, fun-loving charm and charisma left every girl who had any sense with a swooning crush on him. Even as the years went by, Sebastian didn't lose that position, and he always had an endless trail of giggling and swooning girls who always sent enough Valentine's Day cards each year to rebuild a Brazilian rainforest. He got away with murder when it came to the teachers, and they also had to get used to dealing with scraping the jaws of teenage girls off the floor because he had given them attention, a smile, or said something supposedly swooning.

Yet, despite the fact that Sebastian had no end of yearning admirers, he had – strangely enough – attached himself to the mousy, bespectacled, wild-haired, sensible book-geek of the class. Much to the jealousy of all the other girls, he had taken a shine to me, and somehow we had become best friends and completely inseparable by the end of our first year at school. I admit, at first I completely wrote him off as the air-headed pretty-boy who simply wanted a bland brainiac to copy homework from. But somehow he almost immediately became my absolute and firm best friend, which floored me – and everybody else – completely.

Unfortunately, as time went on and we got older, that little smitten crush I had evolved, and I ended up falling in love with him. I never mentioned to anyone, and always hoped I had managed to keep it a secret from him, as the last thing I wanted was to spoil our friendship by him finding out and having to let me down gently, before never talking to me ever again. But that happened anyway when Sebastian decided to leave for California in the name of his acting career when I was fifteen and he had just turned sixteen, right in the middle of our GCSE years. Both he, and his twin brother, had left for America and I never heard from him again, leaving me devastated and heartbroken. That was actually over a decade ago now, and most of the time now, I really would rather forget that I had ever known him, let alone been in love with him. It was just better that way.

I hadn't even known what had happened to him, until he was in his first big film – he was still sixteen and in a movie with a cast list that read like a who's who of Hollywood, and included a dolphin. After that, his face never left the big screen, gossip columns, or the internet, and he was now firmly established as one of Hollywood's biggest names, along with his lovely twin brother Caspian. And here I now was, going to see their films, just to see him again. Possibly for personal torture, possibly because I was proud that they had achieved what they wanted – it was rather hard to tell. The sad truth was despite it being over a decade ago, and the fact I was definitely old enough to know better, I was still smarting from the fact he had absconded without another peep, and had unwittingly broken my fickle young heart whilst doing so. I hadn't forgiven him for it, and the even sadder truth was I probably really never would. Despite everything else I had felt for him, he had been my best friend and I had felt completely betrayed by him. I still did.

To my dismay, I felt eyes well up as I thought about it all. I bit my lip as I forced myself back to my present moment, which was being tortured by Melissa's chirping about the three stars and movie in question. Feeling very daft about it, I pointlessly tried to push those memories back out of my mind as she bounced out through the shop door with her magazine. She was flicking through the pages and showed me the article on the cast of Flight 101. After spending the last two hours watching him on a giant screen, the last thing I wanted was to see Sebastian again, even in a magazine.

"Listen to this," Melissa went on eagerly. "This should cheer you up a bit. 'Our very own home-grown Hollywood star, Sebastian De Carr, is now to return to his hometown with twin brother, Caspian, and co-star Kate Whittaker after promoting their latest blockbuster, Flight 101 in London. They will be taking a well-deserved break and returning to their family'."

The breath was immediately sucked from my throat and lungs, the information coming like a shocking punch to the gut. I felt my blood go icy-cold and a frozen chill shot down my spine at hearing those words.

A stunned panic started buzzing in my head as Melissa's excited voice faded into obscurity, suddenly feeling somewhere between overwhelmingly nauseated and horrified. This was the news I thought I would never hear about my old friend – and being delivered to me via a gossip magazine article, no less – bringing cold dread along with it. The truth was that the one thing worse than seeing Sebastian De Carr again would be to actually not see him when he was back in the same town – that rejection just might shatter what little of my heart that was left, and answer the question I really no longer wanted the definitive answer to – that he really did never want to speak to me again.

It was easy to pretend that he was too busy, or too far away whilst he was living in LA, or filming in some exotic location, or even in London for a premier. But it was rather hard to deny when he was staying with his parents, three streets away from my own.

The harsh truth was that it was very doubtful he would actually want to see me again – I knew that, really. But it wasn't like I needed it publically and officially confirmed. He hadn't been bothered before, so why now? Not now he was insanely famous. Especially now he was one of the most famous people on the entire planet.

Not a letter, email or a phone call – not even a small postcard to say hello had arrived since he had assured me he would call as soon as he got there. And it wasn't like my online footprint was non-existent either – like everybody else, I was signed up to everything that might be useful or interesting and I had even managed to Google myself with easy success relative to social networking and blog sites. It was a fact I had tried to ignore when it came to thinking about Sebastian, and whenever it came to thinking about him, it seemed like the minute I tried to put him out of my mind, he was back to fill it in again in some way or another.

Through my internal panic, I realised Melissa was still talking and continuing to chirp on about him. It really seemed like there never was going to be any way to escape the shadow he had left in my life. And for that, I now resented him a lot.

"You know, that's really so fantastic," Melissa was saying excitedly. "It's going to be really incredible to have a Hollywood star right here! It's really unbelievable, isn't it?"

If only it was so unbelievable.

I sighed. Sometimes being a "mature" student amongst traditionally-aged ones was irksome when their over-excitable, optimistic teenage side was still a part of their personality, and the deep, dark cynicism of age hadn't yet kicked in.

"The only thing that's unbelievable is your chirping about him," I remarked wryly, nudging her gently with my elbow. "It's not a big deal. This is his home. He should be able to assume he can come home and just have a normal life away from that mayhem."

"But he's not just another normal person. He's now one of Hollywood's biggest stars, along with Caspian. See, look – it says so right there."

Melissa pointed to the quote on the page with an inane, teasing grin. But it was hardly like I needed reminding. The rejection it had inevitably led to was still as raw now as it had been when I was fifteen and he disappeared. And I didn't care if I was supposed to be old enough to know better now.

I firmly decided I was just going to make sure that I avoided anywhere he might be, and hopefully I then wouldn't end up accidentally bumping into him and embarrassing myself. But, the reality was I did actually want to see him. I missed him – more than I would ever admit to anyone, especially him. I missed those nights we had camped out in his back garden in the summer, eating chocolate-chip cookies and ice cream whilst talking all night, and the races to school, and homework copying – which he always got away with, even though I know all teachers knew what he was doing. Even in interviews of his that I saw now, those same charms were put on to get everybody eating out of his hand.

Everybody except me, and to be honest, I always suspected that he had liked being friends with me because I never swooned over him, fell for his charms, or let him get away with anything. But it was hardly likely his famous ego could cope with such nonchalance anymore, was it? Probably another reason to avoid him altogether.

"Hollywood's biggest stars are coming here," Melissa rattled on with a ridiculous grin on her face. "Aren't you excited?"

I threw her an unimpressed glance. "He's also one of my oldest friends. I just can't think of him like that. He's never going to be anything but my old friend Sebastian who used to copy my homework because he couldn't be bothered doing it himself."

"Oh, my God! Yes, that's right. You are his oldest friend…" Melissa suddenly had the biggest grin on her face I had ever seen. "And that makes you the luckiest girl ever – and my bestest friend in the whole wide world! You have to introduce me when he comes!"

I gave her a weak smile and didn't answer. I didn't have the heart to tell her there would be no chance of such a thing happening – mainly because the likelihood of my seeing him was next to nothing, and secondly because hell would freeze over before I voluntarily subjected Sebastian to the hyper-excitable chaos that was Melissa Weston.

I took a tentative glance at the magazine article myself. It was all praise for him, and accompanied by a page-sized poster of him posing with Caspian – clearly a promo shot for the movie. Further on in the magazine was a two-page poster of him with Kate, in a touching embrace, faces pressed into each other a little. Whatever else had happened between them, or not as the case was, I still felt that begrudging pride in him for getting what he had always wanted.

"Is he really twenty-eight?" asked Melissa incredulously, and Lisa nodded. "That seems so unlikely. He looks amazing, much younger."

I threw her a withering look.

"Oh, not that you don't, or anything," Melissa amended quickly. She went back to studying the magazine, or maybe more like hiding behind it. "You don't look old."

Old? Twenty-eight was old?

I glared at her, but said nothing. Melissa carried on reading and offering quotes from the article as we walked. I tried zoning her out, hoping she would move on to another stupidly pointless article about some other pointless celebrity's cellulite and this torture could finally be over.

Thankfully, I was finally outside my parents' home. I politely offered Melissa to come in and join her, on the silent proviso that I knew she wouldn't actually take up the offer at all.

"I'm going to meet Cameron," Melissa answered, referring to her boyfriend. "He's meeting me at that Costa Coffee place. You know, I really don't understand the fascination with that fancy stuff – coffee's coffee. So, I'll see you later then."

I watched Melissa walk away for a few moments, hurrying off to get home in time to get herself ready for her boyfriend. Not that she needed to look any better. The woman had perfect olive skin, long and perfect jet-black hair, and big brown eyes that were depressingly bewitching. She was lucky she had a boyfriend as good as Cameron to run off for. He loved the ground Melissa walked on and certainly wasn't afraid of showing it in public – a rare find in twenty-year-old mesmerizingly-stunning student that probably should have been a model himself. Of course it would be Melissa that would get him. Someone like Melissa would even have had no problem getting someone like Sebastian, instead of ending up being just friends with him. The geek never gets the prince, no matter what those stupid storybooks tell you. The only thing the geeks get are the books they're written into.

Leaving the image of a happy Melissa trotting off, I let myself into my old family home that I had moved back into three years ago when I had returned to start my degree. It had been odd coming back to live in my old house, in my old room, after living in my own rented apartment in London for several years. Voluntarily giving up a well-paying career to finally follow the dream that I'd had since I was young had been a hard decision, but creeping up towards the big Three-Oh, I couldn't face myself knowing that even though I liked – and was very good at – my job, it was not what I wanted to do with my whole life. I had a quarter-life crisis at age twenty-five, signed up to the university back home – as I couldn't afford to study full-time and live in London, then swallowed my independence and my pride to go and live with my parents again for three years. It had not been easy, but now it was all very nearly at an end, and I was about five months away from graduating, I felt it had really been worth it.

The only big down side had to be what I always encountered whenever I walked into the house in the afternoons. I managed to get myself in the front door, but only to find my bratty little sister had left her school bag in front of it for me to trip over. The lounge stereo also blearing her terrible music was already a complete tip. The fact she was no longer in the room and was actually upstairs instead didn't seem to have registered the general common sense synaptic leap that it was probably best to turn it off since you can't really hear it anymore, either.

I took just one look at the room and groaned. My parents were not going to be impressed when they got home from work. I really couldn't wait until the day I graduated and could finally leave this obscure little town, and my parents' house, for something of my very own, once again. And some where that didn't also house the human tornado that was Jamie Ryan.

I still couldn't understand how, after fourteen years of being an only child, my parents had managed to curse me with a little sister. I loved Jamie, but now she was a teenager, she was nothing but an annoying headache of pure chaos and attitude. It was a shame that my returning to the family fold had coincided with the hormones, and – quite frankly – there were times that she was lucky I hadn't thrown her out of the upstairs window.

"It's amazing what you can achieve in fifteen minutes when you're still just fourteen," I grumbled irately, stepping over the junk littering the hallway. Somehow, I managed to get to the stairs without breaking anything, and retreated to my room to hide away for a few hours.

I also had a lot of work to start getting done. Unfortunately, English Literature didn't study itself, and books didn't write their own essays and dissertations for you, either. Now, there was something actually useful they could get the latest version of iPad to do to make people like me happy.

"Jamie!" I yelled over the loud music coming from her room.

"What?" came her sharp reply.

"Turn that noise off downstairs and clear your things before someone kills themselves!"

Jamie's head popped round the door of my bedroom.

"It's a foolproof burglar trap," she retorted with a sarcastic smirk.

I gave her a cold stare. "As if a burglar would want to come within thirty miles of this place, with that noise blearing out of the window. Now, please clear that stuff away."

"I think you just made my point for me."

"I think you should clear that stuff up before I accidentally let slip about the time I had to come and get you when you got drunk and sick at your friend's sleepover," I retorted darkly.

Immediately shutting up and muttering bad words to herself about me, Jamie went downstairs to tidy up her things. I sat at my desk and proceeded to organise everything into a to-do list to get through. It was "Reading Week" now – although the percentage of students actually reading anything was probably in the single-figures – which meant I had a whole week to reorganise my insane workload and get a whole lot of extra assignments done before going back to scheduled lectures again. Fun, aren't I? No one's ever accused me of being able to let my hair down, and I'm not about to change that now. I'd already made an impressive career out of it and I was still planning to get that First to start off my next one. That was definitely all I cared about, as it was that which was going to get me back out of the teensy little town I was currently forced to live in and return to London, this time to be a writer and not just a database analyst and architect.

The problem about organising the disorganised was that the list of work seemed to become longer and longer. Then I also found two forgotten notes on random Post-Its at the bottom of my bag, and I felt my head threaten to explode. Somehow, even working up to my years in corporations with database fixes and coding, I had never felt as stressed as I had whilst trying to complete this course – probably because I didn't care as much about their databases as I did about getting my coveted First. So, for the sake of my sanity, I then decided to leave the work and go downstairs for some food – if I could actually manage to get into the kitchen. I left my mountain climbing gear in my other skirt today.

"Jamie!" I yelled again. "I'd like to get to the kitchen in one piece, if you don't mind!"

"No, I don't mind how many pieces you get there in."

"Jamie…"

Jamie came muttering out of the lounge and pulled a few things out of the way.

"Okay now, Mistress Wonderful?" my baby sister snarked, the wonderful teenager that she was. "Got a problem with doing it yourself?"

I narrowed her eyes at her. "I wouldn't if it were my mess. Now, if you're quite through with the attitude, I'd like to make myself some dinner."

"Ugh!"

Jamie rolled her eyes and walked away. I completely ignored her and went into the kitchen. Before the lounge door shut, Jamie called out again.

"Make me some!" she yelled. I didn't answer.

"Why did my oh-so-wonderful-mother have to bestow on me a bratty little sister?" I muttered to myself as I poked around the fridge. There was nothing much in there, so I settled on taking out jam to make toast with. Then I attached my phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and bopped along to the music whilst waiting for the toaster to do its job.

"Can't you turn that noise down?" yelled Jamie from the lounge.

"No!" I retorted. Talk about the pot calling the kettle a hypocrite.

I sat at the kitchen table with my toast and put up my feet on the next chair to read my favourite and highly battered copy of Wuthering Heights whilst nibbling. Unfortunately, I was immediately interrupted by the doorbell chiming. As there was a risk of Hell freezing over if Jamie answered, I got up to do it instead. I certainly couldn't have that on my conscience now, could I?

I flung my legs down from the chair, got up and grudgingly wandered through the hallway to go and answer the door. When I opened it, I was pleasently surprised to find Sally, my best friend of forever, standing on the step, grinning up cheerfully at me. And for some reason, there was a little dog sitting by her feet.

"Sally, hi," I smiled. It had been too long since I had seen her last, with us both being rather busy. I knelt down to pat the little dog. "And who's this?"

"This is Nutter," she grinned. "I rescued him from the local shelter. Isn't he gorgeous?"

"He's beautiful," I cooed at him. I looked back up at Sally, her clear blue eyes sparkling with delight. "What made you suddenly get a dog?"

"I'm frankly rather tired of being in my dull little place all by myself. I decided that until I can find myself a nice girl who actually likes me, too, the least I could do is get myself a dog for company instead."

Sally was an incredibly sweet, kind-hearted and straight-talking girl – qualities that also made her a great friend. We had known each other since we were in primary school, and had stayed loyal, close friends ever since. She had also been close and firm friends with the Dr Carr twins when we were in high school, and as culpable for getting us into trouble as Sebastian was. Their relationship had been based on doing just that and as much sassing as they could come up with, inducing eye rolling, shaking of heads and laughter from me and Caspian.

I had been sincerely touched when she admitted I was her "most bestest friend in the world" and was the very first person she told when she decided she wanted to come out. I also unabashedly supported her immensely whilst she had trouble about it with her family. She was then there for me when Sebastian left, and we had become closer friends as we got older and became adults together.

Despite the fact I had left Willowfall for university to get a degree in Computer Science in London, and Sally landed herself a job at the local hospital as a clinic administrator after we sat our A Levels, we had remained faithful and staunch best friends – even if it was hard to work to coordinate our schedules just to talk occasionally on another basis other than with online messages and email. Sally's sporadic visits to London had been even more challenging. Even now, after moving back to Willowfall, we had to work hard to coordinate our schedules, and to see her this afternoon was a brilliant surprise. The puppy was an even bigger and better one.

The dog's beautiful, big pathetic brown eyes were staring back up at me, and I smiled down at it. It was a scruffy looking mutt, a mongrel that seemed to have had husky in his DNA at some point in its clear mix-and-match genetic history. I ruffled his soft coat while he tried to lick my hand. Nutter gave a friendly yelp and nuzzled against me.

"Would you like to help take him for a walk?" Sally offered, smiling warmly at me.

Glad to have an excuse to get out of the house, I pulled on my coat, called to Jamie I was going out]t, and stuffed house keys in my pocket, before following Sally and Nutter down the driveway, glad to have a moment alone with the only person I trusted more than anyone.

"So, how are things going then?" Sally asked as we walked down the road. "I haven't seen you for a few days. Have you been busy with studying?"

I shrugged. "Basically, that's it in a nutshell. But things are all right. I have a life of complete boredom and constant study, but other than that it's great. I'll have so much nothing to write about, that I'll have no problem getting work as a freelancer once I graduate."

"Your course involves reading books. I can't imagine it can possibly be that bad," Sally retorted wryly. "You love reading – you can't possibly be bored."

"I am spending nearly all my time glued to my laptop trying to get a First," I told her dully. "I'm brain-dead and actually bored of reading the same things over and over, and even writing now. I never thought that would happen."

"I know what you mean," Sally said sympathetically. "Some things just don't live up to expectations. You know, when I took that job in the hospital, I thought there would be an abundance of intelligent doctors and caring nurses, looking all sophisticated and glamorous. Instead, I got a dingy little office, there were no cute doctors, and I see hardly anyone at all – unless they're boring old, fat men who have come to fix my computer. That ER TV show should be banned for misleading information."

"And speaking of misleading information, Sebastian and Caspian are supposedly coming home."

Sally looked across at me in surprise. "Sebastian and Caspian De Carr?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Do you really know any other Sebastian and Caspians?"

Sally gave me a sly sideways glance. "They're coming back?"

"According to a magazine article I was unfortunate enough to read."

Sally gave me a sardonic smile and sorted derivatively. "Hm. I thought they'd forgotten where they lived."

"The article said they're coming back with Kate Whittaker, of all people, after promoting of Flight 101 in London."

"When are they supposed to be here?"

"Soon, I suppose." I simply shrugged. What else was there to do with that information? "But I doubt he'll want to see anyone from here again."

"Of course he'll want to see you – it's Sebastian," Sally said assuredly, seeing right through me like shined crystal glass. She put her arm through mine and gave a sympathetic squeeze. "But you'd think he'd have said something."

I gave a hollow laugh. "He hasn't spoken to me in more than ten years, why would he do so now?"

Sally offered nothing but a compassionate look and said nothing. She was the only person who knew about my secret crush on Sebastian, and how upset I had been when he left. I was pretty sure she knew how deep my feelings had gone, despite the fact I'd never expressly or explicitly told her. It was the only thing I had ever refused to admit to her. But, in all fairness, I hadn't ever thought I'd needed to – Sally could read me better than I could read a Jane Austen novel.

"Well, he didn't want to know me when he went LA, so he's hardly going to want to speak to me now," I muttered with a sigh. "So much for being best friends."

"He's young and he's male," Sally remarked dryly. "You can't expect much from someone who falls in both those categories."

That was the very moment Nutter decided to pull hard on his lead to go and sniff something or other on my side of the pavement. It sent me nearly over him, and Sally right into me.

"What the— you are definitely aptly-named, Nutter!" Sally laughed at the goofy dog, whilst tugging him to her and onto her side of the pavement again. She then put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed it. "You OK, Lis?"

I smiled at her and shook my head at the dog's antics. "You two are going to be quite the little team," I teased. "You already can't walk in a straight line as it is!"

"All right, laugh it up little Bookworm," Sally grinned at me. "We're going to be fine, aren't, Nuts?"

The dog had his nose to the ground. Sniffing happily, tail wagging, and paying no attention at all to his new mother.

"Dogs are strange," she then shrugged, before turned back to me. "Look, with this Sebastian thing... You never know. I mean, he might come back here and fall head over heels for you."

I snorted. "I don't think so somehow."

"Then why don't you try and find someone else? You've never had a real relationship with anybody, and half-hearted attempts at dating don't count. Pining for him when he's on the other side of the Atlantic and never talking to you isn't doing you any good. There must be someone?"

"I'm not interested in relationships. With anybody."

The expression on Sally's face told me very clearly that she really didn't believe me.

"You can lie to yourself. But you can't lie to me. You're not very good at it anyway – I can see right through you."

"So, you can see right through to my fickle, broken heart?"

Sally gave me a sympathetic smile, warmly murmuring, "Yeh, I can."

I stared at the pavement and Nutter's waggling backside as he trotted happily in front of us, his tail flinging itself about so much it was a surprise it didn't fall off. The cold wind had started turning icy, becoming marginally stronger , and it felt like it was trying to slap me out of my delusional stupor. Sally hadn't been too far off the mark with her remark about the fairytale ending she suggested – I suppose part of me had always fantasised about such a thing happening. But reality was not written by fluffy-fantasy trashy romance authors with "a guaranteed Happily Ever After" enshrined in their description, so there was never going to be any such outcome for me. His returning in silence was testament to that, if I had needed any further proof other than basic common sense.

"So, have you seen the new film?" Sally broke into my thoughts and made me blink my desolate musings away. I shrugged nonchalantly

"Yes. Well, Melissa wanted to go see it and Cameron obviously wasn't going, since it's not superheroes, Star Wars, or other geekland inspired blockbusters. So, I gave in and went with her." And wished I hadn't. "It was really good. He was good. They both were. They always are."

"Good enough to see again with me?"

Well, I walked into that one.

"I suppose," I sighed. The thought of paying to sit through another two hours of him cavorting with the gorgeously stunning Kate Whittaker was making me feel a rather petty pang of twisting jealous nausea, but if Sally wanted company to see it, I wasn't going to deny her that.

By this time, we had also completed our little round-trip about the area and we were back at my door. Nutter started twirling himself around a lamp post and getting himself tangled, once we stopped at the end of my driveway, and Sally gave me a hug to leave.

"Don't forget to tell me when the guys are back," she said with a wink. "I want to kick their tight little backsides for abandoning us for fame, fortune and Hollywood glory."

"Come on, Sal, Sebastian's not going to tell me he's back," I told her straightforwardly. "He never told me he was even coming home at all. He hasn't spoken to me for years. He's obviously not going to start now."

"Don't assume things, Lisa Ryan. Being back here might remind him what a nonce he's turned into and make him change his mind."

I decided to say nothing further about it and just waved Sally and Nutter off. Then I went back into the house feeling even more hollow and melancholy than I had been before.