I gestured to the gap between us. "This. Us. Sex. I don't like the fact you're in charge of deciding when we're ready."

He shook his head. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's my choice too, you know? I'm not some emotionally deficient minor you're taking advantage of. I'm your girlfriend."

"I just don't want to rush you."

"You're not."

"But I'm scared I would if we were alone."

I smiled. "Do you not think when and when not to control our impulses should be a shared decision?"

And he smiled too. "I suppose you're right."

"If I can beat you that easily at bowling, I'm sure I can handle myself in the bedroom."

"You're right."

"How many times do I have to say it, Noah? I'm always right."

And then he squeezed me tight and we went to get some food.

Rain had just about perfected the art of concentrating and sleeping simultaneously. In fact, if there'd been an Olympic sport called concensleeping, he would have won the gold medal. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in the ordinary sense of the word. Sleep conjured images of bed, pyjamas, eight hours, alarm clocks. Whereas he hadn't seen his bed in weeks. Clothes and food were delivered to the lab, showers were in the high-tech toilet facilities and socializing was, of course, off the cards until the situation was dealt with. Not that he had any friends left anyway. Most of them had drifted away during his intense training. It turned out that people didn't have a lot of patience when it came to you frequently missing events but being unable to tell them why. The truth was, they wouldn't have been able to handle the truth. It destroyed everything. Everyone. He wished he didn't know the truth. They were encouraged to make friends and date within the company, like some kind of scientific ultra-restrictive dating agency. It made sense in some ways. Rain couldn't imagine finding a girlfriend and not being able to tell them. To hear them say they loved him and not be able to say it back. What was the point? It didn't mean anything.

He was barely computing what he saw on the monitor. His eyes had grown so used to it, he could pick up a reading almost subconsciously. It was almost an instinct now. Dr. Beaumont had said that would happen.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she appeared next to him.

"Rain?" she asked, her voice commanding his attention.

He jolted back to full consciousness and straightened his body in shock.

"Dr. Beaumont?"

He began tapping his keys to cover the fact he hadn't been concentrating properly.

But the keyboard was suddenly obscured by a large backpack. It landed in front of him with a thump, shaking off the last of his dreamlike state.

"Get packing."

"Packing?" Had he just been fired?

"There are clothes for you in your locker. You'll probably need at least enough to last you two weeks."

He turned to look at her. She looked a mess. Her hair, normally so immaculate, was all over the place, her glasses tangled up in it. And her face was blotchy, almost like she'd been crying...if she was the sort of person capable of crying.

"I don't understand-" he began, but she cut him off.

"We're going to England. The private plane leaves in half an hour."

Rain looked in confusion from the bag to her face and back to the bag again.

"England?"

"Yes."

"We're actually going?"

"Yes. Now. You need to pack. Fast."

He half-shook his head. "I still don't understand."

A flicker of impatience crossed her face. "What don't you understand, Rain?"

He jabbed towards the monitors with his thumb. "The readings, there've barely been any. It's been really calm."

"Rain, Rain, Rain, have I taught you nothing?" She ran her hands through her hair. "Have you been watching the data?"

"Yes. It's all been fine. That tolerance you keep going on about seems to be holding up."

She looked at his screen and sneered. "You've only been watching the data that comes from when they're together. You've not been reading their energy levels separately?"

He shook his head. "No. Why should I? It's only when they're together that we have to worry."

"You stupid idiot." She leaned over and pulled up the matches' separate data for the past twenty-four hours. Rain immediately saw the massive spike in their individual energy readings, almost at exactly the same time.

He gasped. "What does that mean?"

"It means they've just decided to sleep together."

His heart plummeted and dread crept through his body. "What? How? They're not even in the same place."

"They're soulmates, Rain. They don't have to be in the same room to make those sorts of decisions they pick up on each other, remember?"

He stood up, urgency suddenly coursing through him. "We have to get to them."

Anita nodded frantically. "I know. Pack. Now!"

He grabbed his bag and dashed away from his desk, but just as he got to the door he stopped and turned round.

"Anita? It's an eight-hour flight. What if we don't reach them in time?"

Any colour left in her face drained out of it. She barely whispered her reply.

"Then I've made a huge mistake."

And so soon it was the day of the gig.

"You're going to sleep with him tonight, aren't you?" Lizzie said. She was hogging my dressing table while applying layer after layer of mascara.

"What? Don't be silly. Of course I'm not."

"You blatantly are." Ruth was in the process of hogging my hair straighteners and had spent the best part of an hour flicking her red hair outwards. "Otherwise you wouldn't have painted your toenails."

I looked down at my perfectly pedicured feet that I'd spent all morning polishing. "Can't a girl just want to have nice toenails?"

"You've never cared about your toenails much before," Amanda said. She was hogging my other mirror and applying lip gloss. "You barely even bother painting them in summer when you're wearing flip-flops."

The girls had come round mine to get ready and have a few drinks before the gig. I'd been looking forward to it. Usually getting ready with the girls was the best part of any night but not this time. No. They were interrogating me for all I was worth.

I took a sip of my rose wine and sat on the bed.

"I really don't think my toenails have anything to do with whether or not I plan to sleep with my boyfriend."

"You may think that," said Lizzie, putting her mascara wand back in the tube and whipping out her eyeliner. "But subconsciously you're considering it. That's why you're so obsessed with your appearance today."

"I'm not obsessed with my appearance. I would just like to get ready in my own house without having all of you " I gestured towards them "hogging all my reflective surfaces and belongings."

Ruth turned off the straighteners and put them, still hot, smack down in the middle of my carpet. I winced but didn't say anything.

"Oh chill out, Lawson," she said. "We're going to make you look beautiful. Don't you worry."

I took another sip of wine. "Yeah. About that..." I examined my un-made-up face in the mirror over Amanda's head. "I think I'm fine to do my own hair and make-up."

"Don't be ridiculous," Lizzie said. "Trust us. You're going to look remarkable."

"Remarkable doesn't always mean good. Sometimes you remark on someone's appearance because they look AWFUL."

"Seriously, chill. You'll look gorgeous. Trust us. We were right about the dress, weren't we?"

I looked down at the beautiful green dress they'd convinced me to buy. It looked just as perfect as it had in the shop. In fact it looked so good I had to actively stop myself from checking out my reflection every two seconds.

Lizzie finished smearing kohl around her eyes and plonked everything back into her make-up bag.

"Voila." She pouted at her reflection. "All done." She turned to me. "Right. Your turn."

Ruth spritzed her hair with about a gallon of hairspray. "I'm done too. I can help."

Oh dear God.

"Don't look so scared." Lizzie walked towards me with an evil glint in her eye, clutching her make-up bag like it was a dangerous weapon. "You're going to look amazing. Noah's going to think he's won the lottery."

I downed the rest of the rose and closed my eyes.

"Go on then. Do your worst."

I was scared to open my eyes again. Especially after hearing my friends mutter things like "Oops", "Eww, not that colour" and "We should clean that up a bit". So when Lizzie announced I was all done, I kept them shut.

"Thanks, guys. It looks great."

"Poppy. You're not looking at what we've done. Open your bloody eyes."

I nervously opened one eye, then the other and slowly let myself look in the mirror.

I gasped.

The girl looking back didn't look like me at all. She'd been replaced by some stunning sophisticated woman. Yes, woman. They'd done something to my eyes, kind of smokey, with green eyeshadow that perfectly matched the dress. Cheekbones I didn't know existed had been sculpted using some kind of miracle-working blusher. My lips were a neutral colour, but a gloss had been added to them which tingled and gave me a bee-stung pout. And my usually drab hair was pinned back haphazardly, with a few stray ringlets framing my face.

"Do you like it?" Amanda asked, a make-up brush still in her hand. "Are the eyes too much?"

"I love them," I said, unable to tear my gaze away from my own reflection.

"I did the hair," Lizzie said. "Do you like your hair?"

"It's gorgeous," I admitted. "I don't know how you did it but you have magical powers. I've never worked out how to use a kirby grip properly."

"You're definitely going to sleep with him now." Ruth's eyes were gleaming. "When Noah sees you like this he's not going to be able to help himself."

"Wow, Ruth," I said. "Was that an actual compliment?"

She stuck her tongue out. "You know what? I hate to admit it but you're looking good, girl. I just wish I'd let Lizzie do my hair now. I wanted to see what state she made of yours first though."

"And that," I said, "is what you call karma."

I picked up the wine and divided the rest of it between our glasses. We'd only shared one bottle. None of us wanted to get wasted and ruin the evening.

"I propose a toast, girlies. To having a most excellent evening."

"I'll toast to that," Lizzie said.

"Me too," said Amanda.

Ruth put her glass in to chink. "And here's to Poppy finally getting it on."

I turned to her in mock anger. "I. Am. Not. Going. To. Sleep. With. Him. The toenails mean nothing."

Ruth took a sip of her drink.

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered. "Just wait until you see him onstage."

We caught the bus to the arena in a blaze of girly spirits. The wine had made us more giggly and annoying than ever, and OAPs innocently trying to get their groceries home were getting increasingly vexed by our bad behaviour.

It started harmlessly enough with Ruth singing a Ponyboys song. This got us excited and soon we were all joining in. Then, when we'd exhausted all of their playlist, we moved onto Queen, our personal favourite. The problem was, when you're slightly tipsy, you forget that other people aren't tipsy too and our demands to get the bus driver to sing the Galileo bits of "Bohemian Rhapsody" weren't met with a positive response. I don't think it was the wine behind our annoying young-people-these-days-have-no-respect behaviour so much as the nervous excitement. The anticipation of what the evening held pulsed through our blood. The memories lay out before us, waiting to be made, and then called upon in decades' time when we were old and boring.

When the relieved bus driver eventually dropped us off, the sun had set. Only a red streak from the day was left scorched across the sky, making the arena glow in an eerie light. Teenagers had already formed a queue of quivering underdressed bodies at the entrance. Girls stood with their arms pressed against their chests, tossing their hair back and laughing joyfully despite their lips turning blue and their bare tummies erupting in goose pimples. The boys were dressed in standard gig-going male attire jeans and a band T-shirt. They were also pretending not to be cold, but they did this by puffing out their chests and distracting themselves by competing to see who could drink the most cans of bargain booze.

We stood looking at the crowd.