All Chapters of THE WRONG TWIN : Chapter 11 - Chapter 15

They didn't talk about it.That was the thing Sophie kept turning over during the drive — not what had happened, not the belt buckle or the wall or the specific quality of his breath against her collarbone, but the absence of words afterward. How they had simply pulled apart, eventually, not because either of them decided to but because the silence of the hallway had slowly reassembled itself around them until it felt like a third presence in the room. Julian had straightened his shirt with the quiet efficiency of a man recalibrating from the inside out. Sophie had found her bag where she'd dropped it on the floor. She had rebuttoned his top button without quite deciding to, her fingers brushing his collar, and he had gone very still and let her, and then they had looked at each other for one long, unreadable second and that had been all.He'd simply opened the front door, and she'd walked through it.The car was worse. Twenty minutes through quiet Sunday streets, London sliding past

Julian was outside at six forty-five. Sophie saw his car from the upstairs window while she was still pulling her hair back, the headlights cutting two pale beams through the pre-dawn dark, and she felt the particular combination of nerves and something warmer that she had stopped pretending wasn't specifically about him. She picked up her bag. She checked it twice. She told herself this was Yorkshire, not a date, and went downstairs. Her mother was already in the kitchen, which was unusual for this hour. "You're going," Margaret said. It wasn't a question. "To find Charlotte. Yes." Her mother looked at her for a long moment, at the bag over Sophie's shoulder and the coat she was buttoning and something in Sophie's face that Margaret, who had spent twenty-six years reading her daughters, apparently could not quite name. "Julian is driving you." "Yes." Another long look. Then: "Be careful." And Sophie understood, from the specific weight with which her mother said it,

The storm came without much warning.One moment the sky was the low, flat grey it had been all afternoon, and the next it had darkened into something purposeful ,the clouds rolling in off the sea with the momentum of something that had been gathering since morning and had simply been waiting for the right moment to announce itself. Julian noticed it first. He said nothing, checked his phone, and then said quietly, "We're not going to make it back before this breaks."Sophie looked at the horizon. It had disappeared entirely, swallowed into charcoal cloud, and the first drops were already appearing on the windscreen — slow and preliminary."The cottage," she said, before he asked.He turned the car around.By the time they got back the rain had started properly, and they ran from the car to the front step with their coats pulled up and their heads down. Sophie's fingers found the key under the third stone where Mrs. Hartley had said it would be, and then they were inside, the door pull