Chapter One

Before the After

KATIE BILLING

The pain was still ripping through me. Simon was gone. Aimee was distant after the incident with her mother. I know that she blames her for everything that has happened. I should too, but I don’t. Everything was a blur after that. Aimee wouldn’t speak and all she did was slowly carry me away. The motorcycle left alone in the street. She handed me to a doctor at some place called a ‘hospital’. I had never been to one before. He examined my leg. For a human he was very skilled. The wind that tore through the room each time he touched my wound was almost ignored as if he didn’t believe in magic.

What happened next was strange, he didn’t have a magic spell that would make it heal faster or herbs to help the bone regrow. He placed it in a plaster cast and then ordered me to stay at the hospital for a night while he checked if it was ‘infected’. I must have looked scared because even though Aimee was distant she remained with me all night and the whole time I was in the frightening place. It was clearly new to her too, but she wasn’t paying much attention. She would quietly hum a tune in her perfect voice.

After we discovered it wasn’t ‘infected’ we were told to come back in . . . . . . . months to get the plaster off. I was handed crutches and escorted off the premises. Aimee carried me around for the . . . . months, we stayed in a small one bedroom flat overlooking the river Thames. Aimee said after we got the cast off we would go far away into hiding.

When the doctor greeted me to get my cast off he called me ‘Daisy’, later Aimee explained that we had new false names I was Daisy Bouquet and she was Lila Hedgerow. They were definitely names I wouldn’t have thought of. If anyone asked why we called each other ‘Aimee’ and ‘Katie’ we would reply that they were our nicknames for each other. As soon as the cast was gone and the doctor had given me the once over we were gone. Aimee wouldn’t tell me where we were going, not until we arrived.