SUMMER
I left really early the next morning.
Six-thirty. The estate was still quiet and the morning light barely touching the ivy on the walls. I took Elara's bicycle from the shed and rode out through the gates without looking back at the house, without looking up at the east tower, without checking whether anyone was watching from any window.
I'd thought, in the naive way you think things at six-thirty in the morning when your plan seems reasonable, that arriving at school alone would change the narrative. No Voss brother beside me. No black sports car, no white Range Rover. Just a girl on a bicycle, unremarkable, not worth discussing.
But I was wrong.
The whispers started before I'd locked the bike to the rack.
"She rode a bike?"
"Where's Rhett?"
"Think he got bored of her alrea
