"Yeah, well you look like my five-year-old cousin when we dress her up for the Christmas Day walk."

We walked for a bit longer. My feet were beginning to go numb.

"Don't worry about what Ruth said," Lizzie offered, still looking ahead. "I don't think you have to worry about Noah running off with some fan."

This is what I loved about Lizzie. Sometimes, out of the blue, she could just read your mind and say exactly what you needed to hear.

"Thank you."

"I still can't believe he bought you a dress."

I laughed. "Me neither."

"Poppy?"

"Yes?"

"You're very lucky, you know that, right?"

I thought of Noah and how it felt this morning to wake up next to him.

"I know."

It took about ten million years to de-layer when I got home. I stood on the welcome mat, shedding clothes like a snake.

Mum eyeballed the pile of sodden garments next to the mat.

"I'm not washing all those. You've dirtied your entire wardrobe."

I shook one leg to try and get my foot out of my wellington. "I know. I'll do my own laundry. It's cold outside!"

"Hmm."

She walked away unimpressed, probably because she knew she wouldn't be able to help herself and would end up doing my laundry anyway. She couldn't stand to watch me use the washing machine. Apparently I was "too rough" with the buttons.

Once I'd finally removed all my snow clothes, I went to find Dad in the living room.

He was grumbling from behind a giant stack of newspapers.

"Dad, are you in there somewhere?"

His face popped over the top, frowning. He folded up a magazine.

"Your mother is making me do the recycling, rather than enjoy my day off work."

"That doesn't sound fun."

"It isn't. But she's scary when she's in project mode."

"Do you want some help?"

He grinned. "Go on then."

I sat on the carpet and helped him sort out the massive pile of newspapers he'd accumulated.

"Jesus, Dad, why do you keep them all?"

"I might need them one day."

"What? For an expose on the council's recycling plant?"

"Maybe."

I was about to put another issue on the "toss" pile, when a headline caught my eye. "Hang on," I said. "This is today's."

The front page been blacked out, with all the usual adverts for local taxi companies removed.

TWENTY CONFIRMED DEAD IN SNOW HORROR SMASH.

There was a photo of cars crunched up like discarded revision notes, the steel corrugated into ghastly angles.

I had a flicker of a memory from the night before the TV news.

"Dad?" I asked, pulling the paper further towards me. "Was this on the M25?"

Dad nodded. "Right near our junction."

"I saw it on the news last night. I didn't realize it was so close to home."

I opened the paper. On pages two and three, sandwiched between text, were a few grainy photos of the people who'd lost their lives. Their eyes looked out at me from the cheap newsprint almost accusingly, like they knew I'd been watching a film with my boyfriend, having a fantastic time, just as their entire existence was being wiped out like solved equations on a school whiteboard.

I shuddered.

"Anyone we know?" I looked at the photos, and didn't recognize anyone.

Dad shook his head. "A few of the bodies have yet to be identified," he said, his voice rising slightly. "But I'm sure if it was people we knew we would have found out by now."

I put the paper down on the coffee table. "Dad? What's going on?"

"I'm not sure, Poppy. Global warming? It's usually something to do with global warming."

I read the paper over his shoulder for the next minute or so, before standing up and stretching.

"You off to bed?"

"Yeah, probably. I should try and get some work done first."

"You seeing any more of Noah this weekend?" His voice was casual, but he was giving me a look from under his half-moon spectacles.

I shook my head. "Nope. Don't think so. He's really busy rehearsing for this important gig."

Dad smirked. "My daughter. Girlfriend of a rock star...I never thought I would see the day."

"I don't like to think about it that way." I smiled back. "I think of it as, 'my boyfriend, going out with an intelligent wonderful girl who he's lucky to have'."

Dad always had this thing about self-worth. Maybe that was where his sudden odd angst about Noah had come from. Maybe he was scared I would lose myself once I started to share myself.

His smirk stretched into a real smile. "That's my girl."

I sat before the box of tissues and waited for Dr. Ashley to break the silence.

There was a new framed picture on the wall another generic watercolour framed behind shatterproof glass.

The session hadn't started well. I'd apologized. It was something I'd always had an issue doing. But the deeply ingrained socializing force of manners prevailed, and I found myself muttering at the beginning of the session.

"What's that, Poppy? I don't think I caught that."

I looked at the ground, like a toddler being forced to apologize to someone in the sandpit. "I said I'm sorry if I was a bit rude last time I saw you."

He rubbed his hands together. In delight? No. Just my imagination.

"That's perfectly okay, Poppy. We all get upset from time to time."

He didn't say sorry back and I couldn't remember if he needed to. But I thought that was the rules of saying sorry the standard response is "I'm sorry too", even if you haven't done anything to warrant an apology. It's just how people do it.

That had been five minutes ago and I was still waiting for him to talk. The thing was, I knew he wouldn't. Why would he? He would get paid whether I talked or not.

"So if I didn't talk right now, would we just sit in silence for the whole hour?"

Dr. Ashley twined and untwined his fingers. "You don't have to talk if you don't want to, Poppy."

"But you would get paid anyway, wouldn't you?"

Annoyance passed across his face but he did his best to smooth it away with a thin-lipped smile. "I suppose I would."

"It's easy money then, isn't it?"

Another flicker of annoyance. I realized I was being rude.

"Sorry. I'm being rude again, aren't I?"

"How has your week been?"

Classic trick. Distraction.

I shrugged. "Okay."

"Any panic attacks? Unhelpful thoughts?"

I loved his term "unhelpful thoughts". It conjured images of my thoughts as little elves running around in my head doing chores. When had a thought ever been useful? Apart from the major useful thoughts that famous people had, like when Edison thought about light bulbs, or Newton thought about apples. Most of my thoughts were unhelpful. How does the thought Does my hair look okay today? serve any purpose? But Dr. Ashley didn't explain them like this. He said they were thoughts that would only have a negative outcome.

I shook my head. "I've been much better actually. Nothing. Not a sausage."

"And why do you think that might be?"

Another shrug. If I had a pound for every time I'd shrugged in that office...

"Your mother mentioned you've met someone..."

I blushed. I was going to kill her.

"We touched on this last time. I can see from your face you're not too eager to discuss it but this...boyfriend? Can I call him that?"

I nodded, red from head to toe.

"This boyfriend, do you think he's helped? Or is it just coincidence?"

I thought about the fainting spells I'd had when I first met Noah. I'd been convinced it was something to do with him back then. I couldn't help but smile to myself. I'd honestly believed I was ALLERGIC to him at one point. So silly. But it'd turned out to have nothing to do with him. I saw him loads and my body was back to normal. Yes, there were those times when I felt out of breath and my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest, but that was just normal love, wasn't it? That was where all the cliches came from. Love just kick-starts adrenalin. And I had learned all about adrenalin from Dr. Ashley. About the fight-or-flight defence mechanisms that my body sometimes decided to employ without my permission.

"You seem deep in thought, Poppy."

"Huh?"

"Anything you would like to share with the class?" He smiled at his own joke. I hate it when people do that.

"Er..."

Could I? I supposed I might as well. Mum and Dad were paying enough.

"Is that possible? Can getting a boyfriend really help? Things do seem to have calmed down since we got together."

He nodded, his fingers pressed together in front of his face. "I see."

"It might just be coincidence. Maybe it's just all my breathing exercises finally paying off."

"Perhaps, but it might not be a coincidence."

"Do you think it's a coincidence?" I challenged him.

He picked up his gold pen. I thought he was going to make more notes I wasn't allowed to see, but he didn't. Instead, he rolled the pen between his fingers.

"Hmm. That's a toughie."

I stayed quiet.

"In the brain, things are rarely a coincidence. The links, even the supposedly 'faulty' ones, are actually very logical."

He thought about it a moment more.