Sunny and her heart are being pulled in too many directions. When she steps out of the library into the aching light of day, once she has persuaded Delilah that she's okay, she's alright, she'll figure this out, she doesn't know which road to take. She has to talk to Viv. She needs to talk to Astrid and Celeste. She wants to talk to Ravi. And – shit – she's got to talk to Fenfen too, otherwise Luke will get home and spill the beans before Sunny has had a chance to announce that she's moving.

For a moment that feels like an eternity, she is rooted to the spot. Too many decisions to make. Too many possibilities at war with each other, fighting for the slim sliver of her available attention. Her mind is only made up by the number 19 bus pulling up right next to her. That's as good a sign as any, she thinks, climbing aboard and dropping 70p into the tray and folding her ticket over her thumb as she drops onto the first empty seat.

Her brain is so busy, so weighed down by everything she has learnt in the last hour, that she doesn't even put her headphones on. She endures the ride home in silence with her Walkman in her bag, her thoughts chattering so loud that even blasting Britney Spears wouldn't drown them out. Except it isn't home. Not anymore. This little flat on this little street in this little town has been Sunny's sanctuary for almost five years, but it no longer feels like her safe space. It's just a space. Somewhere to exist.

Please be there, she thinks as she stumbles off the bus, lead weights in her feet as she approaches her flat. Her fingers are numb as she tries to jam the key in the lock, jimmying it around and smacking her shoulder against the wood until it gives.

This is not the conversation Sunny wants to be having. She would rather bury her head in the sand than sit Fenfen down and tell her that she's moving out, but she would much rather have this one than the one she needs to have with Viv. The one that, oh, god, she really, really doesn't want to have. How does she even begin that conversation? How does she break that news, news she has no right to know?

When Sunny's sure that her heart is about to beat itself right out of her chest, a combination of her nerves and all the stairs that lead to her flat, she makes it to her front door but she can't go inside. Not yet. She stands in the hallway outside and rests her forehead on the door and takes as deep a breath as she can manage, her lungs inflating until her throat hurts. As she lets it out, the door flies open and she falls into Fenfen's arms.

"Whoa!" Fenfen laughs and steadies Sunny. "What're you doing out there? I thought you were Luke."

"I understand your confusion, we do look very similar," Sunny says, rolling her shoulders in an attempt to shrug off the tightness in her chest.

"What's up?"

"We need to talk," she blurts out as she drags herself into the flat, shutting the door with her hip. As she looks around, she sees how tiny this place is. How dark. How claustrophobic. The windows are so small, the light so unnatural.

"Uh oh." Fenfen perches on a stool in the kitchen and folds her arms on the counter. "Are you breaking up with me?"

Sunny sits on the other stool and rests her elbows on the laminate worktop, sliding down until she is bent over it at a ninety degree angle and her cheek meets her wrist. With a laden sigh, she says, "Yeah." Her eyelids are heavy. She wants to close her eyes and sleep and she wishes she had heeded Celeste's advice. She wishes she had never gone digging, that she didn't have the weight of the truth clasped around her neck.

"Oh." Fenfen says. "Tenny, you know I love you, but we're not actually together. At least, I wasn't under the impression that we are, seeing as you have a long term girlfriend and I have ... whatever Luke is."

Sunny looks up at Fenfen, weak sunlight bouncing off her sleek hair, so black it almost looks blue in this light. She doesn't say anything in response to the joke. She doesn't have to. Fenfen puts two and two together and it's her turn to suck in a deep breath.

"Oh. You're moving out?"

Sunny nods. "I don't want to ditch you, Fen. I love you and I love living with you, but this isn't home anymore." Her eyes start to sting so she blinks hard but that only seems to encourage tears to rise to the surface, leaking from the corner of her eye over the bridge of her nose until she sits up straight and they track down her cheeks.

"It's okay, Tenny," Fenfen says.

"I love Viv. I'm in love with her. She's ... she's incredible. I don't know how the hell she's with me but I love her," Sunny says, starting to ramble in an attempt to gain control over her emotions, but there are too many of them, too much going on in her head right now, and when she pauses too long the tears fall thick and fast. Her words come out muffled, as though she is submerged under two feet of water. "I want to live with her. I'm so sorry, Fen. I'm so sorry."

All the battling emotions come out right there and then in the kitchen. Sunny sobs like she hasn't sobbed in a while. She isn't even really thinking about moving out – she's thinking of Viv, of Viv's mother, of Isabelle, of the size of the universe and the predicament she has found herself in – and she cries like a baby. Fenfen doesn't have any experience with babies. She doesn't know what to do with the sobbing mess beside her except awkwardly pat her back.

"Tenny, it's okay," she repeats. "It's not exactly a surprise. I've known this day was coming ever since, like, your third date with Viv. I'll be fine."

Her words fall on deaf ears. Now that Sunny has opened the floodgates, she can't force them shut against the weight of everything pouring through, crying herself into hysteria because this is all too much. It's all too fucking much.

Fenfen sits there, wide-eyed and alarmed. "Tenny..." she tentatively says. "If you don't want to move out, you don't have to, you know. You can stay here. I'm sure Viv will understand if it's too soon."

No, that's not it. Sunny shakes her head, sniffing and snivelling and grabbing a sheet of kitchen roll to wipe her wet cheeks and her running nose. "It's not that," she says, her words thick when she wrangles enough of them to make a sentence. "I really want to live with Viv."

"What's with all the tears?" Fenfen asks. She is talking abnormally softly for her, a cautious hand reaching out to touch Sunny's shoulder like she is approaching a stray cat. "Are you really going to miss living with me this much? We can still see each other, Tenny, it's not like you moving out is the end of our friendship. You're not even leaving town."

Sunny shakes her head again. She isn't worried about that; she knows she and Fenfen will be fine. No, she's worried that when she tells Viv what she knows, Viv is going to freak out; she's worried that it will be too much for her, that she won't want to risk going through what her father went through. Loving someone who slipped through a crack in time and couldn't handle it. Fear is a vice around Sunny's battered little heart, squeezing tighter and tighter until, like a tube of toothpaste in an iron grip, something pops and the truth oozes out of her.

"I made a wish a year ago to have a girlfriend and then I woke up in the future, except it's not the future, it's now, and I have Viv but I don't remember her and it's been so fucking confusing," she says, hiccuping and struggling to catch her breath as word vomit flows. "I fell into a black hole and woke up in Viv's bed and Delilah said there are all these billions of universes and billions of me, and what if I died in another universe?" She can hardly see through her tears when she stares up at Fenfen, can't see the reaction on her friend's face. "And now I know that Viv's mum did the same thing and she died and I'm so fucking scared, Fen. I'm so scared. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't want to lose anything. I like my life. I don't want to lose it. I don't want to go back to the past."

There's a moment of quiet after Sunny's flood of words, a jumble of syllables sitting on the counter between them. Fenfen slowly inspects them as though they're a pile of dog shit in the middle of the pavement before she steps around the mess to pull Sunny into a hug.

"Tenny, honey," she says calmly. "You're going to be okay. I don't know what you've taken but it sounds like you're having some kind of bad trip right now."

"I didn't ta–" Sunny starts to protest, but Fenfen is rubbing her arm and making soothing noises and it's easier to give in, because a bad trip would make a hell of a lot more sense than this. Never mind the fact that Sunny has never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen.

"You're okay, you're safe," Fenfen says. "Do you want me to make you a cup of tea? Should I call Viv?"

"No." That snaps Sunny out of her stupor. She sits straight and shakes her head so hard her body sways with the movement. "No, no, not Viv, not yet. I need to ... I need to see the witches."

Fenfen's expression is a strange mix of concern and amusement. She really doesn't get it. She cannot see the truth hiding in plain sight in the madness of Sunny's words. "Want me to come with you to find these witches? I'm not sure you should go off questing if you're coming down from a high."

"I'm not high. I need to go," Sunny says, a newfound resolve springing up out of nowhere. She has ticked one item off her to do list – tell Fenfen I'm moving out – or at least, she's pretty sure she has. It can be hard to tell with Fenfen, who never takes anything seriously.

"Where're you going?"

"I have to speak to Astrid and Celeste." She slips off her stool and almost loses her footing, winces when she rolls her ankle. It'll be fine. She'll walk it off.

"I don't know who they are."

"The black hole lesbians," Sunny says, gathering all of the things she shed when she walked through the door – her hoodie, her keys, her scuffed shoes.

"Oh. So it really wasn't a gynaecological problem?" Fenfen calls in Sunny's direction. There's a laugh behind her words but it fades when Sunny keeps moving. "I think I should call Viv. Or your parents. Which of your mothers would you rather knew about your foray into illegal substances?" she asks, reaching for the phone on the wall. Sunny whips around and puts her hand over Fenfen's wrist, so narrow and delicate.

"Please don't. I'm okay, I promise. I'm having a weird day but I'm not high and please, please don't call anyone." She runs a hand through her hair and balls her hand into a fist, pausing for a moment to breathe. Just breathe, she tells herself. Sometimes she forgets. It's surprisingly easy, she has found, for her brain to get so wrapped up in itself that it forgets to instruct her lungs to inflate.

"Okay." Fenfen sounds unsure. "Go and do what you need to do. But Tenny, I mean it, if I don't hear from you soon, I will be calling your girlfriend. I know where she lives and works and I have her mobile number. So don't vanish off the face of the earth, okay? Because I will come looking for you and I will bring reinforcements."

"I won't, I promise," Sunny says, stuffing her feet into her shoes and tying her hoodie around her waist, though how can she promise that? How can she promise that she won't fall through time and wake up in another year? How can she promise anything ever again when the whims of the world have proved themselves to be fickle little shits?

Energy thrums in Sunny's body like a hive of angry bees. She doesn't have the patience to wait for the bus to swing around again so she sets off down the street, a determined stride, her feet knowing exactly where to go with minimal input from her brain. Which is just as well. Her brain is little more than a bowl of soup right now, sloshing around between her ears.

There's the well. The stupid fucking well that started all of this. Sunny resists the urge to kick it as she swings through the gate, just in case it retaliates by thrusting her into another timeline entirely. This time, as she stands on the doorstep and time yawns, she is prepared for it. The way a second stretches into an hour. It doesn't throw her when today has already flung her so far. She grabs the knocker, that crescent moon, and hammers on the door. Too hard, too aggressive, but she is a livewire.

It is forever and a day before the door opens on those creaky hinges, Astrid's soft and smiling face on the other side. The smile doesn't last for long. She takes one look at Sunny's wide, red-rimmed eyes, her wet cheeks, the shake in her hands, and the smile slides right off her lips.

"Sunny? Are you okay?"

Sunny doesn't move. She isn't sure how to answer the question when technically, she is fine and nothing has changed, not really. But the tears return all the same, a sudden burst of them as though a tap has been twisted with the full force of an angry wrist. Astrid steps out of the door and curls her fingers around Sunny's elbow, pulling her out of that strange little space on the front step where time misbehaves, into the warmth of the house.

"Who is it?" comes Celeste's voice from deep in the bowels of the house.

"It's Sunny, darling," Astrid says. "We need tea."

Sunny trips after Astrid into the conservatory, where Celeste is sitting in her favourite armchair with her cat curled at her feet, and she collapses onto an empty sofa as though she has just completed a marathon. The energy that had her buzzing outside has fled. The bees have left the hive and now she is an empty husk.

"Goodness me. Tea indeed," Celeste says. She lifts her eyes to Astrid and says, "Is the kettle on?"

Astrid disappears to the kitchen. Celeste leaves her armchair to perch on the edge of the sofa Sunny is slumped on; she rests an elegant hand on Sunny's shoulder, her fingers as long and slim as the branches of a white birch.

"Something has happened," Celeste says. "We'll wait for Astrid. I don't want you to have to repeat yourself."

Sunny nods her appreciation and lifts up the hem of her t-shirt to dry her eyes. Celeste watches her. She breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth.

"Oh, Sunny," she says. She doesn't need to say anything else for Sunny to hear what she isn't putting into words: you silly child, I told you not to get buried alive.

"My gravestone will read I should have listened to Celeste," Sunny mumbles.

"No, darling." Celeste's voice is uncharacteristically warm, the frost of her self-preservation melted by someone who desperately needs preserving. "I would hope that by the time you are in need of a gravestone, I will be but the most distant of memories."

Sunny wants to kick herself for mentioning gravestones. Death anxiety looms, clouding over her like a thick fog obscuring everything in her path.

Astrid returns with three steaming cups of tea. She pushes one into Sunny's hand. Sunny inhales. She recognises the warming aroma of vanilla chai. The heat of the mug is a welcome distraction, something tangible, the burn tethering her to this world..

"It seems as though something terrible has happened," Celeste says, once all three of them have taken their first sip. Sunny holds the hot tea in her mouth, letting the flavours slip over her tongue.

"Something terrible has happened," she says at last.

"When?" Astrid leans forward.

"1974," Sunny says.

"Darling." Celeste sets her tea on an ornate side table that also holds an antique clock displaying the wrong time and a small figurine of a cat. "You weren't alive in 1974."

"That doesn't mean I can't be upset," Sunny shoots back, though there is no venom in her words. She is feeling calmer already by dint of being here, with the people who understand the most.

"You have a point," Astrid says softly. "I often find myself getting rather upset about the witch trials and they took place hundreds of years ago. Empathy is no bad thing, Sunny." She pats Sunny's knee and says, "What happened in 1974?"

Before Sunny can try to force her words into a row, Celeste fixes those steel blue eyes on her and says, "You dug too deep, didn't you?"

Sunny nods. "I found them."

"Who?" Astrid looks to Celeste. "Who?"

"Isabelle and Margaret," Sunny says. "I went to the library in the university and I searched their names on the internet, and I found them." With the mug in her hands, fingers gripping the hot china so tightly she's at risk of snapping the handle, she manages to keep her emotions at bay when she says, "Margaret went by Molly. At least, the version of her who was married with two children went by Molly. Gastrell was her maiden name. I didn't put it together before. I didn't know enough."

"Molly," Celeste says under her breath. She repeats it a couple of times until, like a key slotting into the right lock, she finds the memory it matches. "Vivian's mother."

Sunny nods. The corners of her mouth take a nosedive, her chin wrinkling with the effort it takes not to break down again. There are only so many tears in her body, she's sure. Perhaps the tea is a bad idea. Adding more liquid to her system is pouring fuel on the fire.

"Oh, goodness." Astrid holds her hand to her mouth, her eyebrows pulling together.

"I don't know how to tell Viv." Sunny swirls her mug and stares at the whirlpool of tea, until the surface stills and she does it again. "This has been a lot for her. I literally forgot our entire relationship and she has been so patient with me. How the fuck do I tell her that her mum did the same?" She lifts her eyes to Celeste and Astrid, begging them to answer, imploring them for a solution. "Margaret wanted love and happiness, she wanted a family, and she woke up as Viv's mum, and she killed herself. She fucking killed herself."

The tears are at risk of returning. Sunny clamps a hand over her mouth, digging her thumb and her index finger into her cheekbones and swallowing a whimper.

"I need to tell Viv," she manages at last. She sets her tea on the floor, no space on the table closest to her, and rubs her knuckles into her forehead. "How the hell do I tell Viv? I feel like ... I shouldn't know this. I barely remember my own girlfriend and yet I know things about her mum that she doesn't. I know things that will devastate her, because what if this is history repeating itself?"

"Sunny..." Astrid clenches her hand into a fist over her heart. Her voice tears when she says, "Sunny, please don't say something like that. Please don't."

Sunny covers her face, her fingertips in her hair and the sharp points of her elbows digging into her knees. The sofa dips beside her when Celeste moves closer, when she places an arm around Sunny's shoulders, and Sunny leans into the touch. She aches for a hug from her mother, either one would do, and wishes she had been honest with them from the start. That first day, when Martha was so concerned, she should have come out with the truth because at least then she would have the comfort of her parents to turn to. Instead, she has these honorary grandmothers who, a month ago, were strangers to her.

"You are not going anywhere, Sunny." There is strength in Celeste's low voice. "You are not the same girl who turned up on our doorstep last month. You have grown into this life, you are not going to abandon it."

"I don't want to. I don't want to go. I'm happy here."

"Then stay. The choice is yours."

"Can you help me tell Viv?" she asks, her voice coming out small. Her heart is a hummingbird, her hands shaking enough that she could take flight. "It doesn't feel like it's mine to share. I never knew Margaret, we just have this horrible thread linking us together. But you, you two knew her."

Celeste and Astrid share a look over the top of Sunny's bowed head.

"Briefly," Celeste concedes.

"Tragically," Astrid adds, which earns her a sharp scowl from her partner, one that says that word won't help right now.

"What time is it?" Sunny asks. When she picks up her tea, it sloshes over the rim of the cup and splashes onto her knee, running down her leg in murky rivulets like the tears of a riverbed.

Celeste glances at three wrong clocks before remembering the watch around her wrist. "Almost five."

"Viv finishes work soon. I should ... yeah, I should go. I should be home. I should be there."

"Would you like us to ring her? We could ask her to come here instead," Celeste offers.

"I don't know her number." Another brick in the tower of Sunny's guilt, her shame that she is not the person Viv deserves.

"Where does she work?"

"The Book Nook."

Astrid bends over and from under her armchair, she pulls out a heavy, well-thumbed volume of The Yellow Pages. She flips through the wafer-thin sheets with practised ease, running her finger down the pages until she finds the listing for The Book Nook, and she carries the weighty book in one hand to the old rotary phone in the hallway.

Celeste stays by Sunny's side; she keeps her arm around Sunny's shoulders. "You're not alone," she says. "I know you have felt isolated and overwhelmed, and I know none of us can ever understand what you're going through, but you're not alone, Sunny."

Sunny lets her weight rest against Celeste as she closes her eyes and tries to internalise the words. I am not alone. I, Tennyson Shelley, am not alone. She chants it in her head, counting the people she has in her life. Celeste and Astrid. Viv and Delilah. Ravi and Fraser. Martha and Sylvia. She is not alone. She will never be alone.

Astrid returns to the conservatory and slides The Yellow Pages under the armchair. "Vivian will be here in twenty minutes," she says. She peers into Sunny's empty cup. "In the meantime, more tea."