One Perfect Summer

makes me feel. What I saw in him is very different to what she and the rest of the female population see in him now. Isn’t it? Oh, God, maybe it’s not.
    ‘Are you okay?’ she asks me when I don’t answer.
    ‘Do you still have that copy of Strike ?’
    I see her hesitate. I can see how tired she is. ‘Yes . . .’
    ‘You go to bed,’ I say quickly. ‘I know you’re knackered.’
    ‘It’s just that Ellie will probably wake up in an hour and I’ll be up half the night with her . . .’
    ‘Of course, of course.’ I feel bad for even asking. ‘We’ll chat in the morning.’
    ‘You’re going to watch it?’ she asks. ‘It’s not the copy that Jessie lent us,’ she adds hurriedly. ‘That would have been a very long “rental” period.’
    ‘Did you buy a copy for yourself?’ I can’t not ask.
    ‘Yeah.’ She tries to brush it off.
    Thinking about it, Sky Rocket came out on DVD only a couple of weeks ago. The fact that she’s also got a copy of that . . . The realisation that she’s a fan of Joe’s is surreal and makes me feel very strange.
    I decide I’d rather not know any more.
    ‘I’ll get your bedding first,’ she says, standing up. It’s only a small two-bed flat so I’m sleeping in the living room. I walk over to the DVDs on the shelves and look through them until I come across Strike , then I go to the DVD player and put it in. Lizzy returns and helps me make up the sofa.
    ‘Thanks,’ I say.
    She comes over and gives me a hug. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks again.
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say dismissively. ‘Get some sleep!’
    ‘I will. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
    She squeezes my arm and leaves the room. I climb into my makeshift bed and press Play.
    I don’t sleep at all that night. Strike is gritty and real and I understand what the director says about Joe’s pain translating to the audience, because it does; I feel it in my core and I’m one of very few people in the world who know why he’s hurting so much.
    After Strike , I surf the internet for interviews and articles, photographs and videos, until I feel like I’ve seen everything that there is to see.
    Finally I can ignore the truth no longer. I have to admit that I still love Joe. I feel like I’ve cheated on Lukas, but I still love Joe. Along, it seems, with every other woman on the planet.

 
    I hear Ellie wake up at six o’clock in the morning. Lizzy goes to get her some milk from the kitchen. I call out to her on her way back.
    ‘Sorry, did she wake you?’ she asks, coming into the living room.
    ‘I haven’t been asleep,’ I admit.
    ‘You’ve been up all night?’ She looks shocked, then she glances at her open laptop screen and it dawns on her. ‘Ah.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I say sheepishly.
    ‘You’ve caught the bug.’ She looks amused.
    I don’t like that description. ‘Do you want me to take Ellie so you can go back to sleep?’ I change the subject.
    ‘No, I’m awake now,’ she says. ‘Thanks, though. She didn’t sleep too badly in the end.’
    ‘She slept straight through, didn’t she?’
    ‘She woke up at one thirty,’ Ellie tells me. ‘You were still in the thralls of Strike ,’ she says teasingly.
    I wish she’d stop making these comments. I’m not just another Strike Stalker. The press coined that term.
    ‘You’ll have to go and see Night Fox next,’ she adds.
    ‘I was thinking I might go today,’ I tell her, feeling a prickle of guilt about Lukas and trying to stifle it.
    ‘Ooh, yes!’ she exclaims. ‘I’d see it again!’
    ‘Have you already seen it?’
    ‘Twice.’ She giggles. Bloody hell, she really must be a fan. ‘I’ll ask Dad if he can take Ellie.’
    Speaking of whom . . .
    ‘MUM-MUM-MUM-MUMMY!’ The cry comes from the next room.
    Lizzy lifts up the beaker of milk. ‘Back in a tic.’
    There’s a ten o’clock screening of Night Fox at the nearby multiplex. ‘Or we can see the 3-D version at eleven?’ she asks.
    ‘We’ll just see the ordinary one, won’t we?’
    She shrugs. ‘I don’t mind. I’ve seen both. The 3-D is good, though.’
    ‘I don’t think I can wait the extra hour.’ I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next three and a half.
    ‘I know how you feel!’ She giggles again. Her behaviour is doing my head in.
    Lukas calls me at nine thirty, when we’re on our way to the cinema. I divert his call, before thinking better of it and ringing him back. I don’t want to have to explain away a two-and-a-half-hour AWOL