The Bedroom Assignment. Sophie Weston

at her so hard that she’d thought he was going to be able to draw her. And his face had told her absolutely nothing.

      Had he seen through her act? Had he?

      No, she told herself. Of course he hadn’t. It had just been a trick of the disco ball lighting. And her own uneasy conscience, of course.

      Heck, at one point it had even sounded as if he and Suze were play-acting. How was that for paranoia?

      You’ve got to do something about that, she said to herself, as she had done so many times before. Stop performing. Tell someone.

      But who? And how? And would they believe her, anyway?

      The men in her life took their cue from her friends. And her friends knew that she was a sophisticated twenty-three-year-old with a cool life and a hot wardrobe. They even asked her advice about their love lives, for heaven’s sake. And Suze was forever asking her to look out for any social incompetents who turned up at her parties. Because Zoe knew all there was to know about men and the dating game. Didn’t she?

      Not one of her friends would believe that twenty-year-old Artemis knew more about love than Zoe did. Heck, seventeen-year-old Harry probably knew more. And one day soon, if she did not tell them, she was going to trip up spectacularly over her half-lies and evasions.

      Or she was going to get stuck in the performance. And she would be performing for the rest of her life. And not one soul would know her. Ever.

      ‘Aaaargh,’ she said aloud. And dashed the dragon mug on the weedy paved slabs.

      It did not break.