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There are a million reasons why Nicole won’t take Ben’s calls; she’s even gone as far as unplugging the phone from the wall so as not to risk Cassie or her dad picking it up. But if she thought she could get away from the maelstrom that surrounded the tabloid story, she is sorely mistaken.

“I’d let him lick whatever he wanted off me,” sighs a schoolgirl as she stands over the newspaper in the corner shop on the fourth day of revelations.

“Imagine looking down and seeing those eyes staring back at you,” says her friend.

“Yeah, he’s got fuck-me eyes if ever I saw them,” giggles another.

“Ten JPS, please,” says Nicole to the newsagent, biting her tongue to stop her from telling the girls how ridiculous they sound, even if everything they’re saying is true.

She pulls herself up short, furious that she’s still unable to hate Ben for what he’s done. She’s not yet allowed her emotions to fully comprehend how far his tentacles of deceit have reached, or what hurts her the most. But what she does know is that she is so bitterly disappointed in herself for allowing him to reel her in—enticing her with a shared love of music; then, just as she’d lowered her defenses, he’d pounced when she’d been at her most vulnerable. Much like he does with every girl he meets, she suspects—even her own sister, whose far-fetched story she still refuses to believe, though she can’t get away from the fact that if it could happen to her, it could happen to Cassie.

As soon as she’d left her flat the other day, Nicole had ripped the newspaper into pieces, her fury knowing no bounds, until an hour later when she pathetically taped it all back together again.

Every single word of the girl’s story had felt like a dagger in Nicole’s heart. She’d boasted about how she and Ben had shared lines of cocaine after a drink-fueled party, bragged that they’d had mind-blowing sex three times, and that he’d called her again the next day for a repeat performance.

Minute by minute, step by step, every intimate detail had been spread across four pages, but as much as it hurt, Nicole kept reading, so sure that, by the end, it would be apparent that the liaison had happened months ago, before she and Ben had met.

She wasn’t delusional enough to think that someone like Ben hadn’t had more than his fair share of lovers and encounters; he’d told her as much. And it was unrealistic to believe that one or two of those wouldn’t crawl out of the woodwork as soon as he hit the big time, desperate to claim their fifteen minutes of fame and a two-grand payday.

But ever since he’d held her that first night they’d made love, promising to keep her safe and telling her that he will always come back to her, she’s believed that they would each forgo all others. That’s the pact they’d made. That’s the promise he’d given her. Yet now it seems there are most likely a horde of “special” girls, including the one he slept with on the very first night he was in America.

“I met him once,” says one of the girls in the newsagent’s, her voice infiltrating Nicole’s eardrums despite her doing everything to keep it out. “A couple of years ago, when he was just starting out and signed to the record company that my dad worked for. And even then, he had that look in his eyes… like he could get anyone he wanted.”

“He wouldn’t be wrong though, would he?” giggles her friend as they make their way out of the shop, unaware of the profound effect their banal conversation is having on Nicole.

Ben had denied all the accusations pitted against him in an interview a couple of days later. But the die was already cast. The six o’clock news ran a segment on the golden-boy-band’s “fall from grace,” citing the fact that there were more police than fans at the airport to send them on their way back to England. “Perhaps it was to make sure they got on the plane,” joked the newsreader, who had been fawning all over them in the studio just a few days earlier.

John’s nostrils had flared as he’d shot a warning look at Cassie, leaving Nicole’s overactive imagination to wonder if her little sister’s claims were true, as preposterous as they were. She’d wanted to ask her dad what he knew, because there was no doubt that something had happened the night of the concert, the night of the drugs raid. Cassie had stayed out late, their worried father had needed to call Nicole, and Cassie had been grounded. But Nicole didn’t want to reopen old wounds, and besides, she didn’t actually want to hear the answer because she was happier in denial.

But it still doesn’t stop the “what ifs” and “maybes” from playing on a loop inside her head, laughing in the face of her insomnia as she tosses and turns each night. The more she tries to rid herself of the picture of Ben and Cassie together, or him snorting cocaine off the kiss-’n’-tell girl’s body, the more graphic the image becomes.

Even though they’d only been together for six weeks, it had felt like years, such was the bond they shared. But if it had meant nearly as much to him as it had meant to her, he wouldn’t have done what he did. And if he didn’t do it, she should know him well enough to know that too. But she doesn’t, and that is perhaps the most painful realization of all.

Giving in to a sleepless night, she reaches over and switches on her bedside lamp. But instead of the peach-tinted lightbulb calming her with its warm tones, it casts a light that makes her feel more alone than ever: Everywhere she looks, there are reminders of Ben, even though his face is nowhere to be seen. The locked diary they’d written lyrics in sits redundantly on her bedside table, and the bottle of Poison perfume that he bought her stands on her dressing table. When she looks down, she sees that she’s wearing his T-shirt—she can’t even remember putting it on—but although she so desperately wants to sniff it, to breathe in the smell of him, she denies herself the pleasure, knowing it will be painfully short-lived.

A tapping noise makes her sit up, her ears more finely tuned after having to endure the cries of her mother calling out in the middle of the night as she pushed her way through the pain barrier. As selfish as it seems, Nicole wishes that she could still hear those anguished sobs, instead of the never-ending silence that has permeated every corner of the house since her mother has been gone.

There’s another tap, against the window, as if the branches of the tree outside are reaching across and gently knocking on the glass. But there’s little wind and as Nicole gets up and pulls the curtain aside, she finds the tree standing perfectly still.

The darkness of the road below is illuminated by the amber glow of the streetlight, and as she peers out to see past it she jumps as another crack makes it sound as if the glass is splintering.

It’s then that she sees him, waving his arms above his head in the shadows.

“What the…?” she says aloud, before snatching up her dressing gown from the chair.

She gently pulls the door to her father’s bedroom closed and tiptoes down the stairs, taking care to avoid the creaking third tread.

As she studies the blurred silhouette through the frosted glass of the front door, it occurs to her that she may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Surely Ben wouldn’t have the gall to come here in the middle of the night.

“Nic, open up,” comes his instantly recognizable voice, much too loud for Nicole’s liking. “Please—just give me a minute.”

She has to let him in for no other reason than not to wake Cassie and her dad, but moreover, she has to hear him out, if only to satisfy the sadistic streak in her that needs to be told that the relationship she thought they had was never anything more than a sick ploy by him to take advantage of her. He’s clearly used to getting what he wants, however debauched, and she’s almost grateful that he hadn’t asked her for anything more than to love him the only way she knew how.

“You can’t be here,” she hisses, keeping the chain on the door.

“Just give me two minutes,” he begs.

“I can’t do this,” says Nicole. “I’ve got way more important things to be thinking about than you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry that you’re having to deal with this on top of everything else. But if you’ll just give me a chance to explain…”

“There’s nothing you can possibly say that will justify what you’ve done,” she says, close to tears.

“None of it’s true,” he says. “You have to believe me—I would never do that to you.”

She laughs acerbically. “You’ve done it to yourself,” she says. “And you’ll never know how much it’s cost you.”

“I don’t even know the girl who’s said this stuff,” he says.

“You looked pretty cozy in the pictures.”

“The photos were of an ex-girlfriend who I haven’t seen in over a year,” he says, his voice cracking. “That’s what the papers do—put words with pictures of people who have nothing to do with the story.”

“So, the article is completely made up, is it?”

“Well, whoever it is hasn’t been brave enough to be photographed, has she? Anyone could say that shit if they’re not going to be identified. It could be a disgruntled fan, it could even be a journalist having a slow news day—they don’t have to be held accountable, yet my life can be ruined. How is that fair?”

Just for a moment, Nicole gives him the benefit of the doubt, knowing that if he takes enough rope, he’ll only hang himself if he’s lying.

“I didn’t do it,” he says, looking at her imploringly. “You have to believe that I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“You haven’t just hurt me ,” says Nicole, her voice breaking. “Look what you’ve done to yourself—to the band. The woman is one thing, but the drugs .”

He looks at the floor, shaking his head. “I haven’t taken cocaine in over a year and I haven’t slept with another girl since meeting you.”

Nicole tsks and turns away, needing to gather herself. Even if the kiss-’n’-tell is a lie, what about Cassie? And every other girl she doesn’t know about?

“After the article dropped, the police turned up at our hotel with a warrant to search our rooms. It goes without saying that despite their best efforts, they didn’t find anything in mine.”

Nicole looks at him, wide-eyed with expectancy before the penny drops: “Michael.” His name comes out in a rush of breath.

Ben sucks on his teeth as he looks away, his pent-up frustration oozing from every pore.

“So… so, what’s going to happen to him? To you ?”

“They were going to make an example of him, that’s for sure. But our manager spoke to them and they came to a compromise.”

“How many times are you going to let him get away with this?” asks Nicole, knowing it’s not really her place, but finding it increasingly difficult to understand how Michael is seemingly able to run roughshod over everything Secret Oktober has set out to do.

“It won’t happen again,” he says. “This is the last time, and he knows it.”

Nicole doesn’t suppose it matters—at least not to her. She was a fool to think that this could ever work. The odds are so heavily stacked against them, the obstacles so high to climb, that she convinces herself it can’t possibly be worth it.

“I can’t do this,” she says, going to shut the door. “I don’t want you to contact me again.”

“Don’t say that,” he says, putting his foot out to stop her. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She bites down on her lip to stop from calling out as a visceral pain tears through her. It feels like her heart is bleeding and her blood is being pumped around her body in the wrong direction, sending her organs into shock. She tries to reason that nothing can possibly be physically wrong with her, but how can it not be, when everything hurts so much?