Anything For Her Book Tour – Extract

If she doesn’t like Aimi very much, she trusts her even less. At the root of it is the seemingly unassailable and, in Mia’s estimation, utterly inappropriate place the girl has assumed in Billy’s affections. If she could be granted just one wish in whatever time is left available to her, it would be for some miraculous event to rip the blinkers from his eyes and enable him to see the girl as she really is. Failing that, she’d settle for knowing he was in a happy relationship with someone who cares deeply about him, someone who might take the gloss off his warped memories of Aimi that owe more to his feverish imagination than anything else. Their so-called relationship was one of those teenage things, an unfortunate collision of circumstances – for Billy a first crush at a time when his emotional radar was, quite understandably, all over the place and for Aimi a chance to share and revel in some of the attention that settled on him around the time of the inquest.

Although she was relieved at the time, Mia can see now that it was unfortunate that it all came to a sudden and dramatic end when Aimi’s parents split up. She went to London to live with her father and Billy was left feeling his soul mate had been ripped from him. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see it wouldn’t have lasted much longer than the six months or so they’d had together anyway. Unfortunately, when it came to Aimi, even that ounce was way beyond Billy’s reach.

So yes . . . Mia is keen for Billy to move on with his life. For some time now she’s been hoping he’ll find someone else to obsess about, which is why she’s been paying such close attention to his presence on a variety of social media of late. She’s resorted to this – almost stalking him online – out of desperation. He’s always been good about staying in touch – in fact, ever since he first left home he’s made a point of phoning her on a regular basis – but these calls never shed any significant light on his social life. She knows more than enough about his work, even if she still can’t remember what a front end developer actually does on a day-to-day basis, and she can describe in detail the strengths and weaknesses of his techie friends, so effusive is he when it comes to talking about that side of his life.