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My sister,  Lottie, picks me up from the headmaster's office. The school was understanding when I feigned not feeling well. Mrs. Hollybush kindly suggested that "maybe something is going around," but she also said she would have to remove me from the "reading parents" list, and that I would need to pay for a replacement book.

"What happened?" Lottie asks me as we sit in her car, waiting for Ethan to be let out of school. "The headmaster said you'd had 'an episode'? What kind of episode?"

I silently pass her my phone, with the email open, and watch her as she reads it. To look at us, you wouldn't think Lottie and I were sisters. I have long, dark hair and skin that tans easily, while she is a pale English rose, with blond, wavy hair curling into a halo around her face. If this were a fairy tale, she would be the good witch, and I would be the bad. "I didn't expect to get an email," I tell her. "I don't know what happened. I lost it reading a fairy tale about happily ever afters."

"Oh, Anna," Lottie says, reaching across the car to tuck a strand of hair back behind my ear. The gesture unsettles me. For as long as I can remember, it's my little sister who has been the emotional one. At thirty-three, she's four years younger than me. I've had two decades of her crying to me about boyfriends and breakups, swearing she could never love anyone as much as *insert name here.* I was always the stable, sensible one, ready with a box of tissues and an appropriately uplifting movie. Now she's happily married, and I'm ripping up schoolbooks. She pats my hand, and I close my eyes to try to stop myself from bursting into tears. "I think the problem is, you bottle everything up and then occasionally it all bursts out," Lottie says.

"I don't know why, but seeing it written down, it all seems so final. I feel like such a failure," I tell her, letting my shoulders slump as I hear how pathetic that sounds. "Dan's in South America living his best life, and I'm here, getting divorced in a primary school toilet. The wording of the e-mail too—'if you get married again'—I genuinely can't imagine ever wanting to meet someone else."

"I know it feels awful right now, it's too soon to think about anything like that. But it will get easier, I promise you." Lottie strokes my hair, circling her fingers around my crown just like our mother used to do when we were children.

"I'm thirty-seven and I'm done with love," I tell her.

"No, you're not, but you're still grieving. Trust me, this time next year, or maybe eighteen months from now, everything is going to look so different. You'll have moved on. I know you can't imagine it now, but you'll be dating; you might even have met someone. There is a whole new chapter waiting for you, all you need to do is keep turning the pages."

I give her a grateful smile, but I want to scream that these trite generalizations do not apply to me. My thoughts are interrupted by a clunk as Ethan opens the car door and jumps into the backseat.

"Hi, Aunt Lottie! Did Mum tell you what happened?" he says, bouncing up and down with excitement. "Mum ripped up a schoolbook, then blamed it on Patrick E."

"Who's Patrick E.?" Lottie asks.

Ethan shrugs. "I don't know. Mum wanted to smash him." 

"The patriarchy," I explain, covering my face with my hands.

"Oh yes, I know him," Lottie says, biting back a smile, as she thrusts her car into gear. "That guy's got a lot to answer for."

ONE YEAR LATER

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CHAPTER ONE

"Only me," Lottie calls AS she bustles through the front door, then presents me with an armful of sunflowers.

"Thank you, but you really don't need to keep bringing me flowers," I say, lifting them out of her arms.

"They're only from my garden," she says, waving me away with a hand. "Sunflowers are so cheering, don't you think?"

While I live in a three-bedroom semidetached in the suburbs of Bath, my sister and her husband, Seb, have moved into a country house with sprawling gardens and an apple orchard. Lottie makes her own jam, which she gifts people for Christmas. I'm embarrassed to admit what I gave most people for Christmas last year, but it starts with "Amazon" and ends with "vouchers."

"Are Jess and Ethan still awake?" she asks, following me through to the kitchen.

"In bed, but not asleep. Don't go up there or they'll want to come down and play cards with you."