Free Me and Mr Jones by Lucy Diamond

the whole day feeling utterly despondent, thinking nobody cared about her, that all those friendships she’d warily built up through sixth-form college were actually just meaningless fluff. Eighteen years old and she felt as if her armour had been knocked askew to reveal a tender vulnerable patch of skin. It had hurt. She’d been looking forward to her eighteenth for so long as well. At last, her childhood would be officially over. At last, she’d be an adult in the eyes of the law, free from the interference of social workers, no longer a case in anybody’s filing system.
    It seemed that adulthood hurt just as much as childhood, though.
    ‘Surprise!’ they cheered that evening as she walked into the flat she shared with a couple of other girls back then, a greasy hovel above a Chinese takeaway on the Albert Road.
    She had burst into tears, feeling tricked and betrayed. And although they all laughed and hugged her, then took her to the Nag’s Head in order to ply her with snakebite, nothing could shake off that tumultuous whirl of emotion she’d experienced during the day, nothing. She could still feel the pain of it now, ten years later.
    It was being caught off-guard, that was what she hated. Being unprepared, unaware. Nowadays she’d rather know exactly what she was letting herself in for. She preferred to stay in control.
    The thing was, being down in Dorset with the sea air and the dance classes and the friendly faces in the tea shop . . . it had been kind of unreal. Too nice for the likes of her. Too good almost to be true. She had started to relax, to let her shoulders slowly sink south instead of having them hunched up rigidly around her ears. That had been her first mistake.
    They were down on the beach at Charmouth, the four of them, the girls squealing and laughing with excitement as Charlie chased after them pretending to be a dinosaur. She noticed the expressions of an elderly couple softening as they watched the spectacle, as if they were reminded of days gone by, perhaps charging around beaches with their own children. Seeing her daughters so carefree and joyful, their long hair streaming behind them both as they ran and dodged, filled her with a happiness so searing and raw that it almost felt like pain.
    She and Charlie had met up twice more now, once for lunch in Lyme, just the two of them, where they had sat on the sea wall with tuna rolls and takeaway coffees from the bakery and chatted about this and that. Then they met for a drink after her Wednesday class and he’d told her funny stories about his childhood and his family. It all sounded so much fun, so idyllic. ‘You’ll love them,’ he assured her, and she’d felt the pull of longing. She’d always envied friends with big families; she’d have given anything to be part of one herself.
    And then today, Sunday, they had come here, to the beach, and it had been really fun. Charlie was such easy company; he was energetic, funny and breezily cheerful. There was no side to him whatsoever, and his laid-back nature couldn’t be further from Gary’s brooding intensity. Despite her determination to keep Charlie Jones at arm’s length, she was already starting to feel that he might actually be the sort of man she could allow into her life, given time.
    But then her phone buzzed with a new message and any warm, fuzzy feelings were swept away in an instant.
    You can’t get away from me that easy, Iz.
    Shitting hell. It was Gary. He was the only one who ever called her Iz – a shortening she’d always disliked. How had he got hold of her new number? Only two people from Manchester knew it – Louise and Monique, good friends sworn to secrecy. Three people now, though, apparently. But what else did he know? Did he know where they were?
    She stared at the message again, feeling cold all over, willing it to have been a misread, a mad brain-melt, where she’d got the wrong end of the stick. But they stayed the same, the words drumming around her