I turned around and found Alex just one centimeter away from me.

"Gosh! You scared me!" I said, as I jumped back. I almost dropped my chocolate cake slice.

"Hello? I scared you? You look like a fucking drug addict!" she said, spreading her arms to point at my messed up hair and smeared makeup.

I looked at her sincere face and a true smile appeared on my face. I left my cake on the counter and threw myself on her.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, as she hugged me back. "Now I'm seriously considering you've been doing drugs."

I stepped back and confessed:

"I am just so lost, Alex... I think I've never been so happy to run into somebody."

That was the first moment that I perceived her like a true friend.

"Why don't we sit down at one of these tables and talk for a while?"

She bought a cupcake at Lola's and we sat at one the round wooden tables.

"What are you doing here?" I asked her.

"I took some days off to visit my family. What about you?"

"I slept at Luke's." I confessed.

"What? Is he back?"

"No, I mean, at his flat. With one of his flat mates. I found a postcard that he wrote for me. I wonder why he didn't give it to me, or send it."

I had brought the postcard with me, so I took it out of my purse and let Alex read it.

"Oh, Tessa. You have to forget about your feelings for him. He's a bastard." she said, her words full of anger, and she dropped the postcard on the table.

She smelled of a fruity Hollister perfume, of the lecture rooms at college, of winter nights trying to study harder than each other at the Bodleian Library. I flew back to before that damn research assignment. Everything was so simple then. Before Luke. Even if Nora was dead.

I wanted to slap myself for having thought that, and I blamed it on my lack of sleep. I looked around to escape both my mind and Alex's suggestion. But I didn't manage to do so, when the old lady sitting on the table next to us flipped the first page of her broadsheet. I leaned on my chair to be able to read it more clearly. The chocolate cake stuck on my palate, just like Camille's brownies had the previous night. I felt heat reaching my face, and my extremities tingled. My blood didn't know where to go in my body anymore. And it didn't surprise me, because the world was upside down.

"Alex."

I could only manage to pronounce her name. I inhaled her Hollister perfume to distract myself, to nestle in familiarity for a bit longer. I hadn't been doing drugs, but I was definitely willing to escape reality for a while.

Alex looked in the direction my eyes were focused in.

"One million pounds?" she howled.

The old lady looked up from above her reading glasses.

"Yes, dear." she said in a sweet, feeble voice. "I think that I can't afford eternity after all. I don't have time to return such a loan! Anyway, heaven doesn't sound as bad, huh?"

"That's not possible! Life can't be sold!" I complained loudly, seeking for a reaction from the rest of the people in the food hall.

I wanted to spread indignation. I forgot my manners, got up, and took the broadsheet from the lady's table. She didn't say anything.

""The treatments will start at St Thomas' Hospital in May. Two thousand bookings have already been made." " I read. I couldn't tell if I was reading aloud or just to myself. "What? This is crazy!"

"How did these people manage to book their vampire-baptism?" Alex inquired, in her always sarcastic tone. "This piece of news is a brand-new exclusive!"

"Remember that the people on the inside have relatives, friends and compromises." I pointed out, refreshing my blocked mind with my own words.

"Yes, sweeties. They made us believe that this was going to be public to maximize their glory and success. This is nothing but another big business deal. Everything in this world is." she shrugged and sighed, with a resigned smile. "I am sorry to be the one to open your eyes. If you don't get yourself in the big fish tank, you die. In every way. That's the way it is."

She got up and, without looking back at us, she pointed at the broadsheet, and invited us to keep it. She left the food hall through the door leading to the jewelry stands.

"This is getting too far. I- I can't control it."

I started to walk in the same direction that the old lady had gone out. I needed to breathe in some of the freezing London air. Alex followed me and cried after me:

"Tess! You just have to wait to prove that this belongs to no one but you."

I turned around to face her, frenzied:

"I can't prove it, Alex. If Luke did it... I can't find enough strength in me to give him away. And if he didn't... I don't have a clue about who did. I need an efficient solution."

Alex sighed, as she followed me past the make-up stands and the smartly dressed staff. We crossed the door to the street and I finally breathed again.

"I am going back to Luke's flat. I have to take all my stuff before I go on my date with Professor Abbey's mate." And David's father, I reminded myself. "Then I'll take a train back to Oxford and we'll fix this."

"Yes, miss. You're the captain on this trip." she said, and she flashed a smile that was too honest for that blurred out moment.

I hugged her and run to the Bond Street tube station.

Silence still flooded the flat when I arrived. I took my coat off and slowly walked towards Camille's door. I guessed she was having trouble falling asleep at night, and she tried to get some rest when the sun came up. I would know all about disorganized sleeping patterns. I also knew that the next step was having no sleep at all. Hopefully, that was a different way to vampires and immortality.

I turned her door just enough to put my arm through it. The air was thick and suffocating, full of carbon dioxide, as if she hadn't opened the windows for years. Perhaps she hoped that time wouldn't advance towards an unpredictable future if she didn't replace old air with fresh one. I reached for the note that I had left on her bedside table. I felt my way through the table, and my fingers didn't find the creased paper, but bumped into a thick notebook. I caught hold of it to clean the table from objects that made my search more difficult. I was prepared to ignore whatever she had written when the familiar handwriting on it hypnotized me.

It was Luke's. I couldn't read clearly, so I run to the couch in the sitting room and turned every light on. It wasn't a usual plain notebook. It was a binding of my report. Luke had drawn arrows from my every paragraph and commented them. Had he been trying to break every detail into pieces? I felt an arrhythmia when I realized I had proof in my hands that he had been the one to steal my idea. I turned the pages in a crazy motion, looking for something to shake that idea off my head. My heart jumped down to my stomach and then out of my mouth. And then I couldn't feel it beating anymore. I got up and started walking in every direction, fast, and I jumped high again and again, to reanimate my confused heart. The asphyxiating air in Camille's bedroom was filling the sitting room too.

The first pages had comments in another handwriting apart from Luke's. I gasped, and looked towards Camille's door at the same time that she opened it. My fiery eyes led her to my hands. She immediately recognized what I was holding.

"Oh, Tessa..."

""Oh, Tessa" ?" I imitated her. "What the hell is this, Camille?"

She stood just outside her door, without saying anything, unable to think of another lie good enough to satisfy my demure need for answers. She tied her corny lilac robe tighter and looked at the floor.

"You talk all sweet and naively to me, you drown me in my misery in my ex-boyfriend's bedroom... You try to blind my eyes in every possible way... And- and I find out that either you stole my idea on your own, or you helped my boyfriend deceive me!"

"He didn't do it, and I didn't, either."

I walked in circles, afraid that my heart would show signs of stopping again. I was aware I must keep adrenaline flowing, now that I was close to answers.

"Oh, wow, how convincing." I shrieked, and I stopped to look at her.

I threw the notebook to the couch, and I regretted it immediately. I needed proof. But Camille didn't jump after it. That was a much more convincing argument than her words.

"To be honest, at first, I wished he had betrayed you."

Those words stabbed my trembling heart, and I had no option but to sit on the couch.

"What?" I muttered, unable to talk loudly anymore.

Camille sighed again. She didn't look sad for me any longer, she looked embarrassed. I could see that she regretted having confessed that last part.

"I am in love with Luke, Tessa. I have always been."

"What?" I whispered again.

I felt like a fool. My Broca's area wasn't able to construct full sentences. Had Luke and Camille been lovers during my relationship with him? That didn't make sense at all. He loved me and lusted for me to the edge of craziness. He couldn't feel that and then want someone else. He just couldn't. That would be an even worse betrayal; the rupture of every single one of my dreams. The breakdown of my past as well as my future. I desperately needed to know that at least my memories with him were true, to have at least something real, something I was sure about, in the last year. I had never doubted Luke's love for me. Even if he had probably sold me out. That part of us – the one we had shared – had to be real.

The bright lights in the room flickered over our heads and contributed to my growing headache. I looked at Camille. Her gaze was sincere. She was being absolutely honest with me.

"Luke and I were going out when he met you."

I didn't want to picture it. I swallowed hard. My mouth was sticky and dry, and my head was too. Camille noticed that. She paused, as if overwhelmed at the taste of those memories and at being sharing them with me.

"We broke up just before the Saturday you slept together in Brighton." she blurted out, in a voice that was much deeper than her usual one.

She sounded almost hoarse. I tried to swallow hard again. There was nothing left to swallow in my mouth. My heart accelerated. I felt so foolish.

"What? And he told you that he was taking me there?"

"No. But I read your texts on his phone. It was unbearable, seeing him long for you, call you, be with you. I hated you."

"I ... I never would have guessed."

She spread her arms.

"I reckoned he would tell you about me the first time we saw each other. Then I tried to tell you. But I didn't really see the point, besides getting you jealous, which, if I have to be honest with you, was a very appealing reason. After that night, he told me about you." she sighed. "He told me everything that I already knew."

I hid my face in my hands and couldn't help breaking out. Camille continued talking, with her eyes fixed nowhere. I could tell she was looking at the past.

"I asked him what he felt for you. He said he had fallen in love with you."

I rubbed my eyes with my hands. I had always heard that everlasting love was constructed on mind-blowing passion, on intimacy. Luke and I had had that. But his opaque emerald eyes had warned me all along that he had someone else waiting for him. I just hadn't been rational enough to see it clearly.

"But he never gave you up. You still hung out together. I was jealous when I discovered you were having lunch together at Bibury." I confessed.

"We kept being friends. But nothing happened, Tessa. I was too hurt, and he was too smitten by you. However, I must confess I kept... trying to seduce him, subtly. But I don't think he was conscious of that."

My mind flashed through all our moments together. To the wild moment in Bibury, while Camille was just meters away. My hurting eyes found the binding on the couch.

"You still haven't explained this." I said, as I picked it up.

"It's hard to explain." she said, and shrugged.

She was speaking in her usual high-pitched voice again.

"Go ahead." I encouraged her, ignoring her pitiful excuses.

She rolled her black curls in her trembling fingers, searching for the appropriate version to share with me.

"I was trying to figure out Luke's goal."

I didn't understand what she meant by that, but I decided that it was best to let her go on.

"He didn't mention anything about your research project while you were carrying it out. I assume you had an agreement."

I nodded quickly and briefly, impatient to hear the rest.

"But I found out that he was staying up late every night, in his bedroom. Before you came into his life, he also went to sleep late, but he used to stay in the dining room, and I would always join him."

She sounded nostalgic, like she was savoring those late nights again. I felt sorry for her and disgusted at the same time. I didn't want to picture the two of them cuddling. I couldn't allow myself to break down even more. I cleared my throat with a provoked cough and she continued talking:

"One night, I knocked on his door, and went in without waiting for him to answer. He was talking to you on the phone." she sighed, hurt. "But, apart from that, I noticed that he was scribbling down on an already filled out notebook."

She pointed to the binding in my hands.

"I also realized, when I thought about it afterwards, that he hadn't been talking to you about what he was doing."

"You listened to our whole conversation?" I muttered, but it came out louder than I expected.

Her face reddened.

"I didn't have a choice. There's only a wall between our bedrooms. I didn't only listen to your conversations..."

I knew what she was implying, and, this time, I was the one to blush. We had certainly made loud noises the night after the London Eye trip.

"Anyway, the following day, when he left for college, I searched for the notebook. He had it very well hidden, camouflaged between his first-year notes. I stayed home that morning, and read everything. I- I couldn't believe it!"

Her enthusiasm outstood from her plain shriek voice, and brought me back to life. I was glad that she at least found my discovery was good news.

"But what I didn't get was why he was making his own notes on your work, and why he wasn't telling you about it. Was he trying to beat you? Was he just willing to help you, or was he working for someone else?"

"I- I don't get it, Camille. You seemed so sure about his innocence. You were the only one assuring me that he wouldn't be able to do that to me. And now you're saying you have suspicions too?"

She shrugged again. She seemed really small whenever she did that gesture. Her thin body compressed and the only thing I could see was her lost gaze, dressed up in her shortest black locks. Not even her knew what she believed. That was definitely a very common characteristic of us, the people of the new era.

"When he run away, I found the notebook again, and I tried to work out what the intention behind each of his comments was. I don't think I can blame him. I think he was just trying to help you." She paused, to rub her vacant eyes. "He really loved you, Tessa."

My eyes filled with tears, and I lifted my chin to the roof, to keep them from falling down. I had to be the strong one.

"I find that harder to believe every day since he left."

What did you think of this chapter? It's a very important one! I would love to know what your theories and suspicions are! Do you think that Luke was working for someone else? Do you think Camille might be lying? Let me know in the comments! I am entering the Wattys2016, so, if you enjoyed it, please don't forget to vote :)

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