'What are we thinking, people?' Taj whispered, his back pressed against the edge of what was once the doorway of one the buildings directly opposite the Saudi Embassy, his eyes shrewdly scanning the surrounding area. It was another scorching day and sweat glistened liberally above his brow, plastering wispy strands of his dark hair to his forehead.

'Well, the welcoming party isn't doing it for me,' Jace replied grimly, nodding towards the three bodies impaled on the spikes lining the top of the wrought iron fence of the Saudi Embassy. Bullet holes ravaged the bodies, as if they had been cut down by gunfire as they'd attempted to reach the other side. 'Remember how they used to impale the heads of traitors on spikes on London Bridge as a warning to anyone who might dare to oppose the Crown?'

'You think it's a warning?' Gav said, gazing uncertainly at the grisly scene.

Jace turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised, amusement tugging on the corners of his mouth. 'No, superstar, I think it's three unlucky bastards who didn't climb the fence quick enough. Let's hope you can run faster than them, eh?'

Gav looked Jace over and rolled his eyes. 'As long as I can run faster than you, that's all I need to worry about.'

'The dead don't worry me one bit.' Abby inched closer, her elbow nudging my side. Her gaze barely touched on the bullet-peppered bodies. 'It's the living that we need to watch out for. Especially any with grey complexions and an ability to climb the buildings without the need for rope or a ladder.'

I took a sidelong glance at the Grey, trying to detect a hint that this kind of talk bothered him, but he seemed mostly unfazed, apart from a slight tightening of his jaw and a cold steel in his eyes that was so unlike the Tom I knew. I'd been doing that a lot on the journey here – categorising all his little mannerisms and behaviour into Tom and Grey. I needed him to be more Grey now, less Tom. I needed to look at him and see what he really was underneath, instead of the man he was pretending to be. I marked the hard look in his eyes as a win for the Grey list and gripped my SA80 tighter, my hands damp with sweat. It was uncomfortably hot out here and I was desperate to scratch at the small of my back where the perspiration was sticking my t-shirt to my skin.

'I won't argue with that.' Taj smiled at Abby's observation and nodded. 'Okay, we all know the drill by now. Jace, you go with Lena. Evie and Tom. Abby and Gav. Len, you're with me.'

Any other day and I might have bristled at the prospect of being paired with Tom, but today it felt like a godsend. A twist of fate turning finally in my favour. I resisted the urge to smile.

'Let's go,' Jace said, moving out first, with Lena close behind.

I let my gaze snap back and forth between them and our surroundings, examining every possible hiding place where our enemy might be concealed. It was pretty normal to feel like you were being watched when topside. The city wasn't ours anymore. It was theirs. We were nothing but trespassers in an alien world, and yet today, that creeping sensation that made my flesh break out in goose-bumps seemed heightened. Sharper. Bringing everything into focus in a way that made my muscles pinch tightly.

Once Jace and Lena had made it through the gate, upon which the gilded Saudi emblem of the palm tree and crossed swords was now sullied by grime and the stain of war, I scanned the street again and slipped out through the doorway, moving quickly across the road, keeping as low as I could. Windowless buildings watched my flight, vacant stares that pricked my flesh with an icy touch despite the heat that hit me as soon as I crept out of the shade.

Reaching the other side, I skirted around the half-open gate, slipping into the grounds and pressed my back against the wall, where the grass had taken over the landscaped borders and was almost up to my knees. The once carefully coiffured gardens of the Saudi Embassy were now a thick tundra of dandelions and bodies scattered among the tall grasses. The smell here was particularly strong and pungent. Flies buzzed angrily, unused to the agitation of air caused by the creatures that usually lay still and rotting as they fed from them, burying eggs deep into festering wounds and open cavernous mouths.

Tom reached where I stood, and I shifted slightly to my left as the top of his arm brushed against my shoulder. My foot met resistance as I tried to move away from him, and I looked down, shrinking back and unable to stop the exhale of breath whispering from my mouth.

The dead woman looked fresher than most bodies I'd seen.

Protected in the relative shade of the side of the restaurant and almost totally concealed in the long vegetation, she'd seemingly escaped much of the decomposing power of the sun and heat. Tufts of wispy grass grew in her long brown hair and from the clothes that tightly bound her bloated body. Creeping clover-like weeds had claimed her limbs, as if trying to pull her into the ground. Her mouth was open, her fat tongue protruding and I watched, horror growing, as a large fly landed on it, lazily examining the surface before pushing its bulbous black body inside.

Much like Abby, the dead didn't usually bother me, but there was something about this one that caught my attention and I couldn't look away no matter how much I wanted.

It was the boots. She was wearing similar boots to mine. Chunky, laced-up boots with thick stitching and silver rivets.

And her hair, a similar shade of dark brown, a similar length. Hers was dull and brittle with death, but close enough to mine for me to spot the similarity.

I stared at her face and shivered.

'What we are waiting for?' Tom whispered beside me, impatient. He hadn't spotted the woman yet, he was too busy keeping watch, his astute gaze searching every conceivable hiding place.

'Nothing,' I said, dully, taking a deep breath and regretting it as soon as the taste of death and rot coated my tongue. 'Nothing at all. Let's go.'

Stepping round the dead woman, we picked our way through the borders that skirted the driveway to the Embassy building.

Jace and Lena had already reached the shade of the portico, and I watched them head towards the half-open door, moving fluidly in sync with each other. A stab of something that felt horribly like jealousy twisted in my gut. I was Jace's partner on missions. It had just become the norm. One of those unspoken things. A development that had seemed as natural as breathing. Seeing him now with Lena felt wrong and made me even more determined to reclaim what I'd lost when the Grey had decided to force his way back into my life. Soon, even though it felt like forever, we too reached the building and we slipped inside, taking one last long to see where the others were.

Inside the Embassy, there had been a war, or what looked like one.

Bullet holes gouged the once-pristine walls. Dark stains washed every surface with a bloody coat of paint to match the new décor of dead bodies and carnage. The black-suited security service personnel of the Saudi Ambassador lay side by side with Greys, bullet shells discarded between them like macabre confetti. Stray bullets had ripped apart furniture, foam bursting out of seat cushions and splintered wood covering the sumptuous rugs.

Lena nudged one of the dead Greys with her booted foot, dislodging its hand which had been resting on its ashen chest and the arm fell to the floor with a dull thud, palm facing up and its long thin digits stretching out as if reaching for me. Even in death, its large black eyes looked alive, sunlight from the gap in the door reflecting off the oil-slick surface. I wondered what Tom saw when he looked at the dead ones. Did he see himself, just as I had seen myself in the dead woman in the long grass outside? Was he filled with an unspeakable anger at seeing one of his own kind slaughtered, its body bone-pale and dried out?

I looked away from it quickly, only to find myself caught in Tom's line of sight where he stood close by, his expression blank as he watched me watching the Grey. I lifted my chin imperiously as I looked back at him, holding his gaze for as long as I could bear.

He looked very un-like Tom today, dressed all in black. Tom had always thrown in a bit of colour somewhere, but the Grey wore dark jeans and a faded black T-shirt that was just a bit tighter than Tom would have worn. It was all a little bit cooler, in fact, Tom would have said the Grey was an effortlessly cool bastard, while looking down at his own clothes self-consciously as if wishing he could dress like that but didn't think he could ever pull it off.

Weirdly, it seemed, he could pull it off. It gave him a harder edge, matching the steel in his eyes as he looked at me. He exhaled a sigh, the tension around his jawline softening, his unreadable face yielding into something that looked like sadness, and finally I could stand it no more and glanced towards the door expectantly, hearing footsteps outside on the porch.

Abby and Gav appeared, with Taj and Lenny not far behind.

'Okay, let's get in and out, quick as we can,' Taj said, nodding at Tom. 'Lead the way, man. Let's see if your friend Khalid was right about this place.'

Tom swallowed, a small, almost-unobtrusive motion but I saw it and my confidence surged. A spiteful kick of malice that fired up my veins.

The Grey had a lot riding on this. He'd worked so hard to win everyone over. All this time, pretending, putting in the hours, ingratiating himself with the group. Stealing everything which was good about Tom to earn favour.

If Khalid had been wrong about this place, or if the weapons cache was already gone, Tom would have dragged us all the way out here for no reason. Risked our lives for no reward. Of course, not every mission was fruitful, we'd learned that the hard way, but the Grey needed this to work out. He needed to be the hero in everyone's eyes. Good ol' Tom.

'This way, I think,' he said, walking towards a doorway on the right-hand side of the lobby, stepping over the body of a large man blocking the entrance and motioning us to follow.

The windowless passage beyond the lobby was dark, the gloom becoming thicker and heavier the further we went. I switched on the torch on my rifle, the bright beam cutting though the black but doing nothing to lift the air of death this place carried in its walls.

We crept along the corridor, where the dust was cloying and itched in the back of my throat. Our beams swept over the open doorways, illuminating the darkened offices, tables upturned, computer monitors smashed. Every room felt like a museum to a lost world, a world we would never go back to, with its perfect balance of order and chaos. Rooms lined with dust-covered shelves filled with files that meant nothing to anyone now. Rooms filled with history and decay. My torchlight lingered on the slack face of a man, slumped back in his office chair, his chest blown apart.

Someone else's beam hit the corpse's face and I turned to see Jace standing by my side, leaning almost casually against the doorway.

'I bet he hated his job anyway,' he whispered, smiling at me.

I smiled back, shaking my head at him, punching him lightly on the arm, before moving on to join the others.

At the end, where the passageway cut a sharp right angle to the left, Tom stopped, peering around the corner, before backing up to the wall on the opposite side, gesturing for Taj to move to his side. It seemed surreal watching Tom carry himself in the way he did, like a skilled, effective soldier, holding the gun like a natural, when in life he'd never have dared touch one, let alone hold it, aim it or pull the trigger. With Taj covering the corridor ahead, Tom turned the handle of a set of large wooden double doors to his right, nudging them open gently with the butt of his rifle.

The doorway took us into a much grander office than those we had passed along the way.

A huge mahogany desk took up half the space. Heavy velvet drapes hung at the back of the room, revealing an arched Georgian window, the panes clouded with thick ashen grime. A shard of sunlight pierced through the glass, casting a hazy glow over the desk, dust particles dancing in the air.

Tom stood in front of the desk, seemingly lost and a small tendril of panic crept into my gut. What if this was it? His trap?

Everything was too still. Too quiet.

'What now?' Lena said, a little too loudly and Tom's head snapped in her direction, his eyes widening slightly as his gaze over her shoulder.

'There.' He gestured to another doorway, cut into the built-in bookcase, that we hadn't even noticed nestled in the shadows. A dead security panel was on the wall next to it and Lenny walked over and pushed on the door handle. I felt a collective release of tension sweep through us all when the latch clicked open.

'Must be a fail-safe system,' Lenny said. 'Unlocks all the security doors in the event of a power cut. I guess they were worried about not being able to access whatever they have hidden in here.'

'Or maybe they just didn't want to get locked in with whatever else might be stashed away.' Gav said, staring at the door with trepidation. 'What?' he said, sucking on his teeth and shrugging when he realised everyone was looking at him. 'You hear about these places, don't you? Dangerous prisoners held in Embassy cells. Chemical weapons kept locked away in high security secret laboratories right under our nose.'

Abby sorted. 'It's a good job you were good at football, superstar, because it sounds like all those apocalyptic Netflix dramas were rotting your brain.'

'Ugh, why did you go and say that?' he said, his face dropping. 'Now I miss Netflix.'

'Who needs Netflix when we have our very own apocalypse?' Jace said, joining Lenny at the security door and pushing it open.

From where I stood, I could see the top of a set of stairs leading downwards as Jace shone his torchlight into the stairwell.

'Looks like we go down,' he said, his tone comically ominous, but I found nothing funny in it.

I didn't want to do this. I wanted this to be over. I wanted to get out of here, away from the claustrophobic spaces and bodies. As far away as I could from the dead woman outside who looked too much like me. I didn't trust the Grey, there was something about his demeanour, that cold hard look in his eye that was making me feel nervous.

As everyone began to descend into the stairwell, I followed, pausing at the top.

The marbled steps were wide and steep, and I descended carefully, slowly, so not to lose my footing, with everyone else in front and Lenny bringing up the rear behind me. At the bottom, the corridor was narrow and confined and I was sure the sound of my thudding heart was rebounding off of the walls.

At the end, another door stood, this one slightly ajar. There was another security panel on the wall, thankfully dead also, but this one looked more high-tech than the one we'd seen at the top of the stairs.

'Nifty bit of equipment,' Taj noted, after Tom had edged carefully into the room beyond, gesturing to us that it was safe to follow.

'It's biometric,' Lenny observed, running his fingers over it. 'You know, fingerprint or eye scan, something like that. Hey, Gav, maybe you were right after all?' He smirked.

'Listen, mate, you won't be making jokes when some fucked-up toxin gets in your system and melts you face off.'

'Didn't you hear?' Abby said, dryly as she moved past him. 'The toxin already melted people's faces off. Melted them right off and we never even knew.'

The room in which the safes were held had no hidden surprises waiting to ambush us, nor did it house any of Gav's chemical weapons, but it did contain a shit-load of actual weapons and ammo, just as Tom said it would.

I hovered close to the door as the rest of the group lined up in front of the already-open safes, their eyes wide, jaws practically on the floor as they looked at the treasure we'd managed to find, and to be fair, it was one Hell of a treasure. Never in a million missions would we have found anything quite like this. We might as well have been in one of Gav's Netflix movies considering what was now in front of us. I pursed my lips, silently seething that Tom's mission had paid off.

Jace whistled through his teeth, unable to take his eyes off the haul. 'Anyone else feel as aroused as I do right now?'

'Too much info, thanks mate,' Gav said, but he too was seemingly hypnotised.

'Speak for yourself,' Taj replied. 'I'm more than happy to hear about Jace's arousal.'

They laughed madly. They were mad, all of them. High on the discovery, when all I wanted to do was get what we came for and get out. I glanced over at Tom, noting how he didn't seem to be happy at all that his plan had come to fruition. Instead, he looked pensive, troubled, a small crinkle of concern tugging on the skin between his dark brows. What the Hell was wrong with him?

'Hate to break up the party, people, but I really think we should get out of here,' I said, hoping the urgency in my voice was the catalyst to get them moving. Something wasn't right here. I could feel it so strongly.

Tom turned in my direction. 'Yes,' he agreed, his tone strangely robotic. 'Let's get this over and done with.'

We took as much as we could each carry, which to be fair, still left a lot behind in the safes as the weight would have been too much for our backpacks to take it all. I left the room first, eager to get us out, feeling the extra weight on my back and wishing I'd not had to take so much. I needed speed on my side and the backpack slowed me down a bit too much for my liking. Yanking the straps up onto my shoulders, I gritted my teeth and climbed the steep marble steps, glancing back only when I reached the top, perturbed to see Tom at the bottom, his gaze fixed coldly on me as he ascended.

My neck prickled with unease as I looked away, reaching the office at the top of the stairwell. We moved quickly back to the lobby, and out onto the portico, the sun momentarily blinding us as we separated into our pairs again and began to skirt along the edge of the grounds towards the gate.

I was too aware of Tom by my side. Of the weight on my back. Of the sun burning the grass.

And the silent, silent city all around us.

If someone had told me the city had hit the pause button, I would have believed them.

Everything was stilted. Frozen. A still-life portrait.

Then, everything changed, and the city erupted.

As soon as we hit Curzon Street, they appeared, a squadron of Greys heading directly towards us, mounting burnt-out cars and climbing over rubble with an ease and speed that was terrifying. Their long, lithe limbs deftly navigated the treacherous assault course of debris and jagged metal, their large black eyes glinting like oil in the sunlight. It still creeped me out to see them in broad daylight. Look up, away from the devastation and deathly stillness below, and you'd be fooled into thinking nothing had changed. Clouds still caressed the skies. The sunshine still felt good on your face. It was a thousand no-filter Instagram posts.

Until you looked again and saw what was coming right at you.

'Left, left' urged Taj up ahead, and we all began to run, fleeing in the direction of Queen Street.

Behind us the Greys shrieked in unison, their terrifying cries carrying through the air and making goose-bumps blister my skin. We rounded the corner, but Tom and I who'd been the last to leave the Embassy grounds, were already a distance away from the rest of the group and I glanced back to see the first of the Greys had already made it to the junction of Curzon Street and Queen Street. There were two of them, and they broke off from each other, taking to the sides of the buildings either side, crawling along with ease until they were almost alongside of us. Twisting as I ran, I aimed the rifle and fired off a volley of shots, catching the closest Grey as it was preparing to launch itself at me. The bullets ripped into its body mid-flight, spraying dark blood into the air and it screeched, careening into the street, almost hitting me as landed hard on the ground behind me.

Automatic gunfire tore through the air to my left. Tom was firing at the other Grey that had taken to the building on the left-hand side, using the window frames and balconies to propel itself along. Finally, his shots hit the target and the Grey hurtled to the ground, landing on top of an abandoned delivery van, its body crashing through the windscreen.

'Fuck,' I hissed.

Up ahead, one of the buildings had collapsed into the street, its painted red brick now a mound of rubble blocking much of the road. The others had already made it to the other side, using the left side to climb over where the debris wasn't so high. Jace looked back at me from the top, hesitating, raising his gun to fire shots over my head.

I frantically waved my arm at him. 'Go, GO!' I shouted, 'we're right behind you. Go!'

We reached the barricade, Tom just slightly ahead of me and he began to climb, throwing his rifle onto his shoulder, so he could reach the top. I began to climb too, my foot slipping when I heard the noise explode behind me and made the mistake of glancing back.

The squadron filled the street, a mass of slick Grey bodies seeming to fill every conceivable space – the road, the sides of the buildings – so very many of them moving so incrdibly fast that it took my breath away to see it.

'Here, quick,' Tom cried, reaching down and grabbing hold of my wrist, pulling me up on top of the rubble. We locked eyes once – fleetingly – and then were slipping, falling down the other side until we reached the bottom. I landed hard on the brick, grazing my hands and underside of my forearms and I winced at the vicious sting of it, knowing that I'd probably managed to scrape off a few layers of skin in the process.

By the time we'd reached the end of Queen Street, the army of Greys were already at the site of the collapsed building. I stared at them, dismayed. There were too many. They were too fast. We couldn't possibly outrun them.

With my heart thundering in my chest, I knew I had only one choice.

Plan B.

Plan A – fight and flight – which basically consisted of tearing apart as many Greys as you could while running very fast in the opposite direction and heading for the Tube tunnels.

Plan B – as a last resort, hide. Find a place to hide and stay there until it was safe to come out. It was a risk, but fuck, what wasn't a risk when it came to the Greys? No matter which option you took, the chances of being caught was always on the cards and right then, finding a place to hide and quick seemed like the only bloody option.

'There,' I barked at Tom, speeding towards the half-open door of the Chesterfield Hotel on the right-hand side. The scarlet canopy above the entrance was torn and bedraggled, the flower boxes that used to line the gated fence outside, now shattered on the pavement, the red blooms that used to hang like garlands now gone.

Slipping through the entrance, into the hotel lobby, I moved quickly away from the windows of the front of the hotel, keeping low and glancing back to make sure Tom was with me. I knew this place. We'd had afternoon tea here a few years ago, a treat for my birthday and it was towards the conservatory I now headed, knowing it offered me an escape route round the back of the hotel.

The light inside was dim, and barely manageable but my eyes adjusted the best they could, and I sped up, hearing Tom breathing hard and hissing my name behind me.

'Evie... Eve... wait up.'

'Come on,' I urged him. 'We need to find a way out.'

'But, the others...'

'Will be fine. They know the score. If you can't outrun the Greys, you hide and find your way back to base later, when it's clear. This is Plan B.'

We'd made it to the restaurant. The buffet table had been all but obliterated, but the stench of rotting food and decay still lingered strongly in the air. I navigated the hectic maze of half-destroyed dining tables and chairs, slowing my pace slightly. I needed him closer. It was now or never. I knew this now. I'd never get another chance like this.

'Plan B?' he whispered. His voice sounded shaky and unsure, a slight tremble in his tone.

'Yes,' I said, my hand moving to my holster. My heart thudded loud and hard. The entrance to the Conservatory and Terrace Bar was just ahead. 'Plan-fucking-B, Tom.'

I turned abruptly, a deft movement I'd learned to master since the invasion, the pistol already in my hand, my arm raised, aiming the gun directly at him and only to find myself looking directly down the barrel of the handgun he was already aiming at me.

My breath caught in my throat.

The Grey studied me, that same cold look in his eyes as before, no trace of the hesitancy and fear I'd heard in his voice just seconds ago.

It had been an act. Nothing but an act, faking his concern as he'd prepared to pull the trigger on me.

'You look surprised, Evie. It was always about this though, wasn't it?' he said, his voice flat, taking on that odd robotic tone I remembered from inside the Embassy. 'I knew something wasn't right when you were suddenly so agreeable about this back at the base. You don't switch your mood or your opinion so easily as that. You think I don't know you?'

I laughed, coldly. 'Spare me the psycho-analysis bullshit. You don't know me as well as you think you do. A lot has changed since he died. I've changed. You think the Evie he knew would be standing here now with a gun in your face? You think she'd ever have considered killing you? I'm not that Evie anymore. I'm not his Evie.'

The Grey's expression faltered a little, a slight downturn of his mouth. 'You're not as changed as you think you are,' he said. 'I still see her. I still see you.'

'No,' I insisted, my hand tightening on the pistol grip. 'You see what you want to see. You see what he remembers. Nothing more.'

He dismissed my comment with a shrug, then lifted his chin, that imperious stare that I now knew was the Grey in him. So arrogant. So bloody smug. 'So, what's this great Plan B of yours anyway? You're going to kill me and then find your way back to the others? What will you tell them? Are you going to tell them that I was killed by the Greys and then play the grieving wife act?'

I smiled. 'Something like that. Don't worry, I've got that whole grieving wife thing down to a tee. I've been doing it for two years already, a little longer won't make much difference.' I let my gaze sweep over his face, my heart hardening like iron. 'Who knows, maybe I'll tell them I discovered you were a Grey after all? Maybe I'll say you turned on me as we tried to hide, after you set up this whole ambush to kill us, just as you did to the other group you infiltrated.'

The Grey's eyes widened, a look of genuine surprise on his face. 'Wait, you actually think this was me? That I led them here? I didn't do any of this! I brought you all here for the fucking guns. That's all. What happened out there is nothing to do with me! How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not one of them anymore?'

'As many times as you like, I'm never going to believe you.' I sneered at him. At his fucking face. At the way he looked. Everything about him that he'd stolen from me. From Tom. 'Everything you do is just an act. Everything. You pretend and you lie over and over. It's all you know. It's who you are. A Grey. Nothing more.'

'No,' he almost gasped. 'I'm not... I'm...'

'What?' I spat. 'You're Tom? Is that what you were going to say? You're not him. You'll never be him. You might look like him. You might even sound like him sometimes, but you're not him. You're a fake. An imposter. You set this whole thing up and I can't go on pretending to everyone that you're one of us, because you're not. You never will be. I can't let you walk out of here. You must know that? This has to end.'

The Grey just stared at me, the seconds ticking by painfully, until he sighed, an exhale of breath that seemed to drain the energy from his body. Slowly, he lowered his gun, his arm dropping heavily to his side like a dead weight.

'Are you going to kill me then, Evie?' he whispered.

Resignation swam in his eyes, and a sadness, a deep accepting sadness that I didn't want to see. It was an act. Nothing more. A good one, I'd give him that, but then again, he was good at this, wasn't he? Faking it. Acting. All part of a day's work for a Grey.

'Not going to defend yourself?' I remarked. 'Pretending to give up in the hope I'll feel sorry for you?'

God, he was pathetic.

He swallowed and gave a small shrug of his shoulders.

'There's no pretence. You have a gun in my face. You could pull the trigger quicker than I could raise my arm again.'

He bit down on his lower lip, scraping his teeth over the skin. A Tom thing. Bastard.

'Shut up,' I hissed at him. 'Stop pretending you're okay with this. I'm going to kill you. How can you possibly be okay with that?'

'I'm not. But I also happen to think you're not okay with it either. If you were, you would have done it already.'

My finger hovered over the trigger. I could feet the air between my fingertip and the gun, thick and viscous. Just a touch of pressure is all it would take. Heat prickled the back of my neck and strangled my throat in a tight bind.

'I don't think you really want to do this, Evie,' he said, softly.

'Oh, really? And what makes you think that?'

'Because part of you believes me. Part of you wants to believe me. You're not entirely sure that what I've told you is a lie. I see it in your eyes all the time. That doubt. You want it to be real. You want him to be real.' He inched closer, until the barrel of the pistol pressed against his chest. 'He can be, Evie. I can give him back to you.'

My arm shook slightly. A tiny tremor, but I felt it like an earthquake rolling through my bones and I knew he felt it too.

'No, no,' I said, pressing harder. 'You're a liar. He's gone. He's dead. Tom's dead.'

Tom cocked his head to one side and smiled, and it was just so achingly Tom that my chest felt like it was exploding, a bullet fired straight into my heart, tearing it to pieces.

'Then, do it,' he said. 'If you really believe that, then do it.'

He gently covered my hand with his own, his thumb brushing against my forefinger.

'Pull the trigger, Evie. Kill me.'