twins, Zamantha and Lila and Ntethelelo and Beauty and Maxine and Sindi and Andi. Every single person who’d given me their number in the last few weeks was here with me. For years, I’d been reaching out to people anonymously, never wanting to get too close or let them in. But now they were everywhere and they were reaching for me and I was letting them. And for the first time in my life, everything felt full. So full it was bursting at the seams with people and laughter and happiness and . . .
“Klaw!!” I gripped Noah as the dark crooner slid up to me again, looking every bit the lecherous Lothario.
“Heeyyyyya,” he hissed at me seductively.
“Hi!” I blinked at him and was just about to ask him what the hell he was doing there when Lila came up and slipped an arm around him.
“Oh, I didn’t want to tell you on WhatsApp because it’s such big news, but Klaw and I are official!” she said, and threw her arms around me. “And it’s all thanks to you. You’re a matchmaker!”
“So glad I could help.” I patted her on the back and grimaced over at Noah.
“Great news! Great news!” Noah said overly enthusiastically, and then he wrapped an arm around Klaw and gave him a manly hug. “How ’bout we get a drink? I feel like we might have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Noah said, and dragged Klaw away. He shot me a look over his shoulder and I burst out laughing. I was so happy right now, and I didn’t know how it was possible to be even a little happier than I was. Only it was. I just didn’t know it yet.
CHAPTER 74
One year later
“Do you want to go to my place?” I said, walking out of the coffee shop with Becca and Frankie in tow. The day I’d figured out who they were, it had hit me like a bolt of lightning. They and that day was the last memory to come back to me, and when it did, it was almost as though I’d known it all along, but just wasn’t able to access it.
It happened to me when I went to Vast Investments again. I passed that bookstore once more, and then the pharmacy and then the elevator, and it had just dawned on me. What was weird, now that I thought about it, was that both Becca and Frankie had been in my life that entire time. Lurking in the background constantly.
“Sure,” Becca said, following behind me. She looked so different from the photo in the back of her last book. That photo had been in black and white and didn’t capture her at all. But the photo of her in her new book, You, Me, Forever, looked so much more like her. She’d showed us the book, and it was due to hit the shelves in a few weeks’ time. Frankie too seemed very, very different. For one thing, she was no longer blonde and there was no longer anything perfect and polished about her. The little bits of dog hair on the back of her shirt told me that. We all crossed the road together and then walked through the park that was directly opposite the café we had just been in. Our new house was right across the road from this park, in a treed suburb full of bright jacarandas that bloomed in summer, leaving the road coated in a soft purple carpet. We arrived at the bright pink door in the bougainvillea- and ivy-covered wall. Another reason I loved this house.
“Is this you?” Frankie asked, looking back at the coffee shop.
“It is. I chose the coffee shop because I didn’t want to go too far away from my house. I haven’t really been out much lately, and certainly not too far.”
“Oh,” Becca said a little flatly, and I wondered what she was thinking, that maybe I was back to my old ways of not leaving the house much, and whilst that was in fact true at the moment, it wasn’t for the reasons they might be thinking.
“I want to show you something,” I said to them both. “That’s why I brought you here.”
I eased the door open and we walked into the front garden. It was big and sprawling, full of flowers and bright rose bushes, which I’d planted. Having a big garden had been a non-negotiable for me when we’d bought this house, and I’d splashed