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washing away any lingering traces of Jake from my bedding, before putting all physical signs of him into a box under the bed. Out of sight, out of mind.
    If only.
    When the activity stopped, and I was doing everything in my power to persuade my body to give in to sleep, my brain had time to regain the upper hand. Thoughts of Jake and the time we had spent together crowded my head: an endless montage of clips from the film of our love story. The first time he held my hand and the electricity that surged through me. The look of utter adoration in his eyes the first time he told me he loved me, making me physically stumble into his arms. The way it took him months to fully open up about why he hadn’t gone to uni, and how special I felt, knowing he trusted me enough to share the reason behind his tears.
    Jake was my first kiss, my first love, my first everything. He had now become my first heartbreak, my first soul-destroyer. As my head flip-flopped between the desperate urge to ring him and beg him to change his mind and the desire to rip his cock off if he ever got within twenty feet of me again, sleep remained elusive.
    After a couple of hours of brain-ache, I gave up and got out of bed. Looking out of the window, I wondered what Jake was doing. Was he also watching the moon, equally unable to close his eyes on the day, unwilling to let it end like this? Or was he sleeping the easy slumber of relief?
    Taking heed of Kema’s advice, I resisted the urge to wallow in sad music and opened up my Kindle. I bypassed anything remotely romantic, eventually opening up Birdsong and scrolling through to the section in the trenches. Blood, guts and misery were what I needed. Preferably Jake’s. Maybe. Maybe not.
    Maybe.
     

     
    I woke up the next morning, in that all-too-familiar Kindle-kissing pose, and resolved to make a friend on my course. Yes, I know how sad it sounds that I had been at university for two weeks and hadn’t really done more than have the occasional conversation about the work set.
    The truth is I don’t like going up to people I don’t know and trying to talk to them, waiting for that moment: the moment when their eyes zero in on my neck and then cloud over with something like pity. Maybe the childhood taunts have long since ended, but in many ways, they were better than the sideways glances and unspoken questions it raises. Were you born with it? Why don’t you cover it up? Can’t you get it removed? Jake can nickname it my heart-mark as much as he wants, but I’m still the one who has to live with people looking at it, not into my eyes.
    So I don’t know why I was surprised that, since starting at uni, I had felt lost without Cass. When she had opted to go to Birmingham instead of Brighton, I completely understood her reasons after everything that had happened. But that meant I found myself alone, without someone who understood me. She was my conspirator, my confidante, my best friend who could be relied on to tell me what I needed to be told.
     
    Me: Txt me when u r up x
     
    Cass: I’m up. Got lecture at 9. You okay? Bit early for you! xx
     
    Me: Not really. Can I ring? x
     
    My phone vibrated with Cass’s call. Her shock at hearing about me and Jake took me by surprise. I had expected that Jake would have been in touch with Flynn. Clearly he didn’t have the balls to tell his best friend, my brother, what he had done. I thought he was better than that. However upset I was with him, I couldn’t deny that the Jake I knew had strong principles and had never before shied away from doing the right thing, even when it cost him personally. Like the promise he had made his dad: he still kept it, even though it was the naïve promise of a child, desperately trying to make his dad’s last moments happy.
    Cass ended the call with a promise to ring again that evening, giving me something to focus on as I fought to get through the day.
    Arriving outside the lecture theatre for my Introduction to American