In the few hours since her presentation, Betty was aware of how much she had changed. When she commandeered their respect, she was a sharp, collected businesswoman. Now she looked like a madwoman.

Her hair had exploded in a massive frizzy halo around her face. She was dressed in a dirty pair of overalls and a t-shirt that had seen better days. Her skin was covered in a layer of grime, the kind that makes you want to take a long hot shower for hours. The only part of her that wasn't dirty was a large circle around her eyes where her safety goggles had been.

When Betty had transmitted all that pent up energy into the phone, of course she had expected to invoke some sort of reaction. But certainly not for it to work. So far, all her other attempts at recreating the energy transmitted during the phone call had failed. But the phone hadn't exploded, which was a good sign. That always got very complicated and messy. It wasn't the actual phone Lea had brought anymore, just one of the many replicas. So Betty decided to risk it and put the SIM card in.

Again, nothing very exciting or dangerous happened, so Betty began to have the slightest flicker of hope that it might have worked. She went into the phone's history of calls, flicking through. All of them had been to either 'Juliet' or 'Kelly', so Betty picked 'Kelly' at random and phoned her.

For once, the phone on the other end started to ring, and Betty became more and more excited. She hadn't expected to make this breakthrough for another few days at least. Wiping the worst of the grime from her ears, she held the phone up to her ear.

"Hello," said the woman on the other line in a bored manner. "This is Zora, head of Cupid Searching. Kelly's away in Brazil at the moment doing goddess knows what, so call me back."

"Wait!" Betty said, trying to stall as she quickly scanned Brazil again. Sure enough, a new person was discovered, and Betty pressed the phone between her shoulder and ear as she worked furiously on her computer to get a picture of 'Kelly'. "It's actually you, Zola, I wanted to speak to."

There was a long pause, and Betty didn't know whether she'd said the right thing or not. She quickly finished getting a picture from the satellite, and she zoomed in to see a blonde haired woman dressed like a tourist. "Zola? You still there?" Betty asked cautiously, moving on to her next operation to find out where the call was coming from. "Don't hang up!" She added, as her computers started to work on tracking the signal.

"You want me?" Zola finally replied disbelievingly, in a stuffy voice. She heard a sniffle. Was Zola crying? "Nobody ever wants me at Wings Agency. They want Kelly and Mae and Juliet but not me. It's great to be needed."

Betty mentally stored the names away in her reeling mind. Wings Agency? Cupid? Her computer pinged, and Betty checked it. It said the signal was coming from up in the clouds.

"I know, it's horrible not to be needed. But you're of great interest to us." Betty coaxed. "We could make you important, Zola. Very important. You just need to come down and see us."

***

I hardly believed my ears. Harriet was gay? The sentence didn't seem to sit right. Harriet had seemed so normal, laughing and chatting with the rest of us, admittedly somewhat moodily. I started to remember her strange text messages. I hadn't thought about them for a while, as Harriet had been out of town for the past few days. And all her talk about a new relationship led to one thought; dos Harriet have a girlfriend?

     I stumbled on my feet, the room feeling as if it was closing in on me. "Rosie? Are you alright?" I heard Fiona ask, but her voice seemed a million miles away. I was in the dark, quite suddenly, and if it hadn't happened before I would have thought that Fiona had switched off the lights. I curled myself up into a ball, knowing I was son the floor even though I couldn't see it. My eyes felt as if they had stopped working.

     I squeezed my knees up so that they butted uncomfortably against my chin, but the pain helped me to concentrate. I knew it couldn't hurt me. I knew I shouldn't be afraid. But I couldn't help it.

     I had started having the attacks since Aunt Kate died. Since the day Mom brought that strange woman home. She called her a counsellor, and she was supposed to help me deal with my grief. Mom dealt with it through her scrapbook, but even though it helped I still felt a little numb. Like somebody had just chopped off my left ear out of the blue, and I only had one ear left to use. I could still hear with one ear, but it felt a little funny and lopsided.

I was supposed to talk to her and open up, but she was a complete stranger. I couldn't believe Mom had made me do it, because I thought she knew me better than that. But it turned out Mom had ulterior motives.

I felt a hand on my side, and I recoiled instantly. "Rosie," Fiona said so softly I barely caught her words. "I'm going to go get someone. I'll be back soon. Just stay put, OK?"

I didn't want her to leave me. I didn't want to be alone. But people have a funny way of doing things you don't want them to, when you don't want them to. They think they're doing good, but they're screwing up. Fiona was going away, like everyone else in my life did eventually. I was one massive mess.

When I got trapped the first time, all I wanted was for my Mom to come and hold my hand. To squeeze it tightly for reassurance, just to let me know that she was there for me. It's all I ever wanted from my Mom.

But she was too busy with Pippa to go check on her youngest child to make sure she was okay. What kind of mother tells their child to sit and write about their feelings for their new counsellor while they go and sleep with aforementioned counsellor in the bedroom shared with her husband?

We weren't poor exactly, but my family were never really well off either. The house was a little semi detached one that was always freezing, even in the summer. So the walls were paper thin as a result of the very cheaply rented house, and you could hear even a whisper through them. So how was I not supposed to hear my Mom kissing someone who was far from my father?

     I was so shocked, an innocent little ten year old discovering her Mom was secretly gay. I had my first fit, where my surroundings went black and I just dropped to the floor. Mom never even found out.

      In fact, I never told anyone about my frequent little fits, least of all my parents. Hiring Pippa to help me with my grief was really Mom's way of being able to bring her to the house without suspicion. She always made me write, while she went in to my Mom, and I ended up eventually turning them into letters to Aunt Kate, which I left at her grave.

     I loved Aunt Kate more than all the rest of my family put together. Mom never stopped cheating, so I lost all my respect for her, and Dad was away working all the time, so I never really got to spend any bonding time with him. Okay, I did love Owen, but he didn't understand me as much as Aunt Kate did. That's why I wrote those letters to her, because I felt like she was the only one that would have understood. I told her all about my worries, how every time something happened that related to Mom's hidden gayness I would just fall to the floor. I got better at controlling it, sometimes if it happened in public I could pretend to go to the bathroom and hold it until I got there.

     I just couldn't hold it when I heard about Harriet. It was so unexpected. Completely unexpected. I would never have guessed. I was so shocked that I just went. And to think of all the time I had previously spent with Harriet unknowingly.

    Not that I had anything against gay people. It was just the fact my Mom didn't come out and say it. She snuck around behind Dad's back for years, and even after I died she still hadn't came out and said it. But her and Pippa were still together. I knew, although she was keeping it more of a secret. But she'd planted daffodils in the garden, and Pippa had a full garden of daffodils. I also knew that, because I'd snuck into that garden one drunk night and stamped on top of that stupid woman's beloved flowers.

     So I was actually quite proud of Harriet, in some respect, for having the guts to come out and admit her true feelings. That was far better than marrying a man you didn't love because you were too afraid to say it.

I heard footsteps approaching, so Fiona must has found just the others already. I bit my tongue so hard that I felt the horrible taste of iron in my mouth, but it wasn't enough to jerk me out of it. I needed more pain, and quickly, before the others found me like this. I didn't want them to see me at my weakest, and I didn't want to explain what had brought me to this state. I couldn't talk about Mom without Owen and Kat becoming suspicious, and I didn't want to anyway. If I couldn't tell Kat before my death then why should I tell her after?

I felt a hand on my own, and I resisted the urge to twist it. "Hey, Rosie," Harriet whispered. "It's OK. You're OK."

I wasn't okay. I wasn't okay with Harriet being like my Mom. For sharing that common likeness for women. I couldn't deal with these reminders from my past, from my family. The attacks had stopped after my sixteenth, because I purposely drunk my troubles away. I wasn't an alcoholic, but I liked parties because they helped me forget, and I'd only drinking at them once I turned sixteen, because I was starting to be responsible. But look where drink got me. Dead.

"I know it's maybe hard to take in." Harriet continued softly, holding my hand tightly in her own. "I found it hard enough to accept, but I realised I had to. I had to be myself. I couldn't let people control me, or influence my decisions. I have to make them for myself, even if people think they're the wrong ones. I'm in love with a girl I can never have, and not in a pop star crush kind of way. I can't have her because she's straight, and it's difficult. Many people have crushes on people they think they'd never end up with, but they don't know that for certain. At least their crush dates people of their gender. It was hard enough for me to get my first girlfriend, because I didn't know if she was gay or not. And I've been turned down a few times, and it's hurt because now they're afraid to be around me in case I make some kind of move on them."

I never thought about it from Harriet's perspective, but I guessed that being gay was hard, harder than you might think. I felt a little guilty at my reaction to Harriet's news, as she must think she's lost me as a friend and that I dislike gay people. I wished I could tell her that wasn't the case, but I couldn't. My tongue was frozen, and I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I felt Harriet's ring on her hand as she held mine, so I dug the palm of my hand into the ring as hard as I could. Finally, the pain helped me to focus and bring the world back into vision again.

Harriet yelped, and I could see her now. I was out of it, at last. I think it's the longest one I've had yet. "Rosie, you're bleeding." She pointed out, rubbing at her ring where my blood had dripped onto it. I applied pressure on my hand with my sleeve to try to stop the bleeding.

I reached out at the still stained ring. "Harriet, here, let me fix that - "

"No!" Harriet pulled away and pushed her ring back on firmly, but for a second I could have sworn her hair was blonde instead of ginger. "It's alright, I'll just go run it under the tap. Be back in a sec."

July is pretty much over, and I only have a month before school starts. I better hurry up if I want to finish this story by the end of summer. Also, please hit me with your theories, if you have any, about what Betty is up to, and what Harriet's up to.

Zoe xxx