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“We’ll need to get you a uniform.”

“I have to wear a uniform?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to take this news. My school in Kent didn’t require sixth formers to wear a uniform. And the thought of clothes shopping with Doctor Dyl was excruciating. Surely he wouldn’t put us both through that?

“Would you prefer to shop on your own?”

Hell, can he tell what I’m thinking now?

“Okay,” he answered my unspoken look of panic. “I’ll take you to the store and let you buy what you need. But I’m not happy to let you loose in Central London on your own.”

What!

For the first time since… since it was just the two of us, I was annoyed. With him. I was more than capable of shopping. I had turned seventeen, for heaven’s sake.

“What?” he asked, baffled by my angry scowl.

“I’m sure I can get there on my own.”

“I’m sure you can, Emily. I’m not ready to let you go on your own,” he said, his voice quiet.

He wasn’t ready? This was a revelation.

“I’ll worry about you. We can go today, when the men have finished the carpet. It shouldn’t take them that long. Is that okay with you? As long as you’re up to it, of course. I know you haven’t been out much.”

“Okay,” I agreed, feeling a little more conciliatory.

“Good. We’ll go later.”

I blinked at him. Doctor Dyl was a man of action.

Am I ready to face shopping in Central London?

***

Dylan parked near a place called Sloane Square, and once he’d paid the parking fee by phone, he escorted me into a large upmarket department store. We made our way to the third floor, to the school uniform section.

They sell the school’s uniforms here? What sort of school is he sending me to?

I had the school’s official required uniform list, and Doctor Dyl instructed me to buy as many items as I needed. The sales assistant, who was at least fifty, all big hair and earrings, peered with a critical eye from Dylan to me, trying, I thought, to understand our relationship.

Dead mother’s adopted stepbrother! I glared back at her.

“She needs three of everything, at least,” Dylan said to the assistant, his voice frigid. He wasn’t partial to her disapproval either. “I’ll be back to pay. You’ll be okay?” he asked me.

I nodded, and he turned on his heel and strode toward the escalators.

An hour and a half later, I had all I needed. I hadn’t really noticed what I’d been trying on, I was in such a daze, though I do remember there was a great deal of gray and some checked skirts. Waiting by the register for Dylan to return, I idly observed the other shoppers: mothers with their kids trying on clothes, bickering, laughing.

It was painful.

I should be here with my mother bickering too. But then, if she were here, I’d be going to school in Kent, and I wouldn’t need to be in the uniform department on the third floor of some posh London store.

Dylan appeared at the top of the escalators with Lulu.

Hell! That’s all I need. Lulu I-want-you-now.