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first?’
    ‘You’ve got until tomorrow morning. Aiden’s coming at nine. Trains are back on, and tickets have been sorted: there’s a computer file for you to study tonight with details of your new life.’
    There is one more goodbye I need to make. Late that night, after Mac’s gone to sleep, I stand on a chair in the kitchen and get the owl sculpture down from the top of the fridge. I put it on the table and run my fingers lightly across its beak, the outstretched wings. All made of scrap bits of metal, but in a brilliant synthesis: it looks and feels so real. Ben’s mother made it, made it for me at his request from a drawing I did. It seems so long ago. Now she is dead, killed along with her husband, by Lorders. Just for asking too many questions about what happened to Ben.
    I run my fingers along the back until I feel the faint edge of paper. Grip it between two fingernails, and pull.
    I unfold the note that holds Ben’s last words to me; his last words while he was still my Ben .
Dear Kyla,
If you have found this, it means things have gone very wrong. I’m sorry to cause you pain. But know that this was my decision, and mine alone. No one else is to blame.
Love, Ben
    No matter his words, at the time I thought it was my fault that Ben wanted to cut off his Levo, and all that followed: his seizures, his mum telling me to leave. The Lorders taking him, and not knowing if he was alive or dead. Then he was found by MIA: changed somehow by the Lorders, so he didn’t even know who I was. That last time I saw Ben I tried, I really tried, to get through to him: to tell him to resist the Lorders. There was a moment when I saw something in his eyes; I thought he believed me, that he understood. All I can do for Ben now is hope.
    And the other thing I worked out well after the fact was that Nico had been working on Ben to cut off his Levo, to try to provide the trauma that would trigger the return of my memories of being with Nico and the AGT. But even with that, it is still my fault. If it weren’t for me, Nico wouldn’t have had a reason to go near Ben, would he?
    I stare at the note in my hands. Should I take it with me? I’m tempted. But somehow it belongs where I found it the first time, where it has been hiding ever since. I fold it up and carefully slip it inside the owl, and put the owl back on top of Mac’s fridge. He’ll keep it safe.
    Maybe one day, Ben and I will come back for it. Together.

CHAPTER FIVE
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    The next morning, snow is thick on the ground: the lane is impassable. After a call from Aiden, Mac says he’ll walk down the lane with me to meet him on the main road.
    I hesitate by the door, reluctant to leave what I know, for what I do not; a place where I feel safe, for…what? Mac meets my eye. ‘You’ll be back.’
    ‘Will I?’
    ‘Oh yes. Skye would be very upset if you don’t visit again.’ He opens the door, and Skye bounds out and off the step, then skids to a stop, startled as the snow comes almost all the way to her nose.
    I step out, gather some into my gloved hands and hold it out for her to sniff. ‘It’s snow,’ I explain. I roll it into a ball, and throw it forward. She jumps to chase, leaping in and out of the snow instead of running through it, then looks very puzzled when the snowball is indistinguishable from the rest of the snow where it landed.
    Mac laughs and insists on carrying my small duffle bag of belongings. We plunge down the lane, snow well past our knees.
    ‘So,’ I say. ‘Did Aiden still sound annoyed?’
    ‘He is at me.’
    ‘Oh. Sorry.’
    Mac shrugs. ‘He’ll get over it. Once he sees that you’re all right.’
    When we reach the main road, thankfully ploughed, Aiden’s van is already there.
    ‘Thanks for putting up with me. For everything,’ I say. Where would I be now without Mac’s place to run to, to hide away in?
    Mac gives me a hug and opens the van door, then holds Skye when she tries to jump into the van next to me. I wave through the