It’s a strange animal: good or bad depending on whether you’re on the receiving or giving end. Why is it that people find the thing so easy to demand and yet so hard to practise? All my life, I have tried to be honest with people. Not long after I first met her, Celia diagnosed this as part of my problem. ‘You wear you heart like a Prada bag, Rosie, so everyone can see it. Sometimes it pays to be just a tad elusive.’ So I took it on board, becoming entirely elusive about my heart. I decided that nobody would be able to come close to hurting me again if my heart wasn’t on show. And it worked successfully for me. Until now. Because now the very person that held the key to my past had appeared in the one place I felt safest—in Nate’s company. He’d seen my reaction in there; I couldn’t avoid the process of telling him everything now. Deep down, I knew it: the time was coming when I would have to reveal all my secrets. And, though the thought sent a chord of fear chiming inside, I knew that sooner or later other friends would have to know too.
