Rachel Francis knew how reputations were made.

Storm Goodman noticed the bottle because it was too clean.

Jonelle Moore knew how to make stillness look like power.

Lena Ashcroft had become surprisingly skilled at looking content.

On the morning Jayla Devine returned to the coast, the lighthouse was almost invisible.

Bailee Benson had lived in London for eleven months, three weeks and four days, and still the city felt like a place she had borrowed from somebody else.

Jasmine Vale signed the contract with trembling fingers and a smile steady enough to fool everyone except the man across the desk.

Kayla Campbell had always kept the guest room ready.

Melisa Cotton had learned to recognise Daniel’s calls before her phone even lit up.

Joselyn Wren bought one movie ticket at 3:42 on a rain-softened Sunday afternoon, and because the girl behind the counter was seventeen, bored, and kind, she did not make a face when Joselyn said, “Just one, please.”

By ten past eight on Friday evening, Zara Bradley knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Tania Hale saw her ex-boyfriend beside the supermarket tomatoes, and for one terrible second, she forgot what she had come in to buy.

Ruby Saunders always said flowers told the truth faster than people did.

Lilyana Smith had always been the one who answered.

Rain slicked the cobbles of Whitby’s old harbour until every stone shone like black glass, and the sky hung low and pearly over the sea. Even the gulls sounded cross. Daisy Wood, her camera bag bumping against her hip and her coat already darkened by the weather, stood beneath the narrow awning of a shuttered postcard shop and tried not to look at the red payphone across the street.

By the time Millie Moore admitted to herself that Carter Lawrence had a keycard to her life without paying full admission, spring had already arrived in the city.

By the time Daisy Butler realised she was crying over napkin rings, she knew things had gone too far.

Maya Walker had always believed in keeping something back.

In the morning, Elise Harper stopped waiting to be chosen. The city wore its usual winter restraint—sky the colour of pewter, rain stitched delicately against the kitchen window, the city holding itself together with damp patience.