Any Other Name (The Split Worlds) - By Emma Newman Page 0,32

Z.

A smart black winter coat was hanging on a stand near the door and fitted perfectly. It was belted, with too few pockets and no hood, but it did have an inside pocket in which she could secrete the notes and keys. One of the outer pockets was just big enough to hold the napkin of food. She didn’t care about how the bulge looked.

She tested the keys first and once she’d identified the front-door key she left. In the lift down to the ground floor she wondered if she should have left a letter. If William returned to find his new possession gone, would a brief note saying “Gone out. P.S. You can shove this marriage up Lord Iris’s arse!” make it better? Did the Fae even have–

“Focus,” she said to herself, aware that her hands were shaking. It was the first time she’d been free to go where she pleased for weeks. Since Tom had dragged her back to Aquae Sulis she’d either been locked in her room, chaperoned or doing something secret, dodgy and stressful for the Sorcerer.

Cathy left the building and for a moment all she could do was stand on the pavement and take in the streetlights and cars, the crowds of people and the breeze on her face. She was filled with euphoria and renewed optimism. It took a minute to work out exactly where she was and that Covent Garden was just a short walk away. There would be shops there, and phones, once she had change.

Just walking down the street alone was exhilarating. People passed without giving her a glance and she revelled in true anonymity. No one was watching for her next mistake, no one cared about what she was wearing or how disappointing her face was. They were all just getting on with their own business. This was the world she wanted to live in.

A newsagent’s caught her eye and a sudden craving for chocolate hit her. She went inside and glanced around for the sweets section, only to see Josh’s face on several magazine covers.

Everything else greyed out as she headed for the nearest one and pulled it off the shelf. “What is Josh’s secret?” was in huge letters underneath a picture of him in big sunglasses, caught mid-stride. “Serial monogamist leaves broken hearts in his wake, more on page 4,” said the strap line underneath. Cathy flipped to the page to see a variety of shots featuring Josh and the redhead who’d knocked him down in Manchester and other women, all skinny and fashionably beautiful. She couldn’t take in the text, her attention made scattershot by the shock of seeing him dressed so differently, his hair messy in a horribly trendy way instead of the hopeless geeky mess she remembered.

She stuffed the magazine behind another and picked up a second one, which gleefully described the latest cat-fight caused by two glamour models apparently quarrelling over whom he liked the most. A third speculated about a broken engagement between him and the redhead and a fourth suggested he was about to marry a brunette who looked like she’d eaten nothing but celery for the last decade. They were really all describing the same phenomenon in varying levels of sensationalist language: Josh was having no trouble whatsoever finding rich and beautiful women who wanted to be his girlfriend. And it was all her fault.

“Are you gonna buy one of those or just crease ’em all?” the bloke behind the counter asked.

She looked at him, still unable to form a coherent thought.

“I wanted chocolate,” she finally said.

“Looks like you need more than that, love. D’you need to sit down?” She nodded. He pointed at the door. “There’s a café across the road.”

She put the magazine back on the shelf and grabbed a couple of bars of chocolate to take to the till. When she handed over a fifty, he didn’t take it. “You not got anything smaller?”

“No, sorry, I need change to make a phone call.”

“There’s a mobile phone shop next door, get a pay-as-you-go, save us all some trouble.”

She abandoned the chocolate, desperate to get away from the reminders of her botched wish, and did as he suggested. Twenty minutes later she had a phone and had abandoned the plan to call her friend until she knew her new address in London.

The café was her next stop and in minutes she was sitting down with a steaming hot chocolate in front of her. She was still shaken by Josh’s fame