Instructions for a Secondhand Heart by Tamsyn Murray

Author:Tamsyn Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2017-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Helen doesn’t flip. What she does is much, much worse.

I phone her on the way home and she doesn’t speak for so long after I finish talking that I think we’ve been cut off. “Tell me,” she says at last. “Tell me you told him where to shove his hot chocolate?”

I almost do tell her that, because I know she’s not going to like the truth. But this is Helen: we don’t lie to each other. Much. “No, I didn’t. I agreed to see him again.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath in my ear. “What? When?”

“On Friday,” I reply. “Look, Helen, it’s not how it seems. I like him, he gets me. He’s… nice.”

“Stalkers often are. At first.”

I sigh. “He’s not a stalker—he—”

“He contacts you out of the blue, with a totally bogus question about your recently deceased brother, and then turns up somewhere he knows you’ll be,” Helen cuts in, her voice clipped and precise. “He then starts a conversation to get you to trust him, and the moment you let your guard down, he practically asks you to marry him. Believe me, he’s a stalker.”

She sounds like she’s reading off an evidence sheet, and the rational part of me thinks she’s right. But then there’s the part that sat opposite him for forty-five minutes today, listening to him talk and explain what he’d done and why. The part that noticed the nervousness when he spoke, the gentleness of his voice, the genuine emotion behind his words, the way he said the things I was thinking before I knew I was thinking them. It’s also the part that is suggesting he might be just what I need to help me move on from Leo—something good in my life, something to get me out of bed each day. And I know it should be enough that I’m alive when my brother is dead, but it isn’t. I want someone to see me when they look my way, instead of Leo’s sister.

Helen is talking again, but I’m not really listening. I’m thinking about the flecks of gold in Jonny’s eyes, the way his eyelashes rest darkly against his pale skin when he looks down, and the feeling I can’t shake that there’s something he’s not telling me. I like the idea that I caught his eye, that he was interested enough to track me down, even that he’s a tiny bit obsessed with me. I like the sense of mystery, wondering if there’s more to him than meets the eye. I like feeling something instead of anger and misery and emptiness. I even like the whole thing with Percy and the stupid jokes he makes. I like him.

“… and that’s why you have to tell your parents,” Helen finishes.

Her words jolt me out of my mini-daydream. “What?” I yelp. “That’s the last thing I should do. I can’t even walk to the shops on my own without Mum stressing out. Imagine how she’d react if I told her about Jonny.”

“Neve—”

“No, Helen, listen,” I interrupt, before she starts quoting stranger-danger statistics at me.

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