‘Dylan and Sky’ is stylishly embossed on the front, edged with glitter. I tug my eyebrows together in curiosity as I open the book.
A photo album.
The first picture is identical to the one Dylan showed me, leaked online yesterday. With shaking hands, I turn the pages. More photos taken in Bali, at a distance, but clearly Dylan and me.
I flick onto the next page. And another, desperate to see what’s next. The photos are a pictorial diary, moving backwards in chronological order. Each image is accompanied by a carefully written, precise, date and location.
Dylan with me at the airport, the day we flew out to Bali.
A shopping trip with Tara a week before we left.
Me, alone, in my car at traffic lights.
Holy fuck.
I flip through, perspiration breaking out across my back.
Our arrival at Heathrow in October after the holiday.
Dylan with me in New York, the day after the tour was cut short last year.
The bizarre timeline of our life heads further and further back. Me, leaving the hospital in Bristol after visiting sick Tara. Pictures of me alone at times I don’t remember, taken the summer I met Dylan.
One I do remember: a picture of me sitting inside the coffee shop where I met Lily.
Then come the photos without me in them.
Dylan on tour. Dylan with the band: in clubs, at celebrity functions. I swallow. Long-haired Dylan with girls. A lot of girls. I touch the images as I scrutinise them. How old is he here?
The album ends with a photograph of a much younger Dylan with Jem sitting on a large sofa. Bottles line the table in front and other people are in the background, party-style. The pair are a mess, drunk or stoned, probably both.
My heart beats out of rhythm as I look closer.
Lily is with them.
She’s on Dylan’s lap, holding a drink and smiling. I examine the background. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but the photo looks like it was taken in this house.
Beneath the photo, a love heart and date: May 2010
Is this the night that triggered everything?
What the fuck? What happened to the “shy Lily who wasn’t interested story”’?
“No chocolate biscuits. Are these any good?” I drop the album onto the table as if it’s burning my hands and it falls open. “Oh cool, is this pictures from your school days or something?”
“No,” I rasp.
“Sky?” Dylan hands me the biscuits, then reaches for the album. He flicks through the way I did, expression shifting from shock to anger until his face pales to the shade I’m damn sure mine is too. “What the fuck? How long has she been doing this?”
He catches a page and prepares tear it from the book. I snatch it off him. “Don’t! That’s evidence.”
He tries to take it back, and I hold it to my chest. “Evidence of what? That I’ve had a psycho following me around for the last three years?”
“Yes! She followed us to bloody Bali? How? How did she manage to?”
“I presume she flew, Sky.”
“Don’t be snarky with me!” I shake, unable to believe I’ve been under surveillance by a girl whose activities put the best paparazzi to shame.