Any Other Name by Emma Newman Page B

where she was and that Covent Garden was just a short walk away. There would be shops there, and phones, once she had change.
    Just walking down the street alone was exhilarating. People passed without giving her a glance and she revelled in true anonymity. No one was watching for her next mistake, no one cared about what she was wearing or how disappointing her face was. They were all just getting on with their own business. This was the world she wanted to live in.
    A newsagent’s caught her eye and a sudden craving for chocolate hit her. She went inside and glanced around for the sweets section, only to see Josh’s face on several magazine covers.
    Everything else greyed out as she headed for the nearest one and pulled it off the shelf. “What is Josh’s secret?” was in huge letters underneath a picture of him in big sunglasses, caught mid-stride. “Serial monogamist leaves broken hearts in his wake, more on page 4,” said the strap line underneath. Cathy flipped to the page to see a variety of shots featuring Josh and the redhead who’d knocked him down in Manchester and other women, all skinny and fashionably beautiful. She couldn’t take in the text, her attention made scattershot by the shock of seeing him dressed so differently, his hair messy in a horribly trendy way instead of the hopeless geeky mess she remembered.
    She stuffed the magazine behind another and picked up a second one, which gleefully described the latest cat-fight caused by two glamour models apparently quarrelling over whom he liked the most. A third speculated about a broken engagement between him and the redhead and a fourth suggested he was about to marry a brunette who looked like she’d eaten nothing but celery for the last decade. They were really all describing the same phenomenon in varying levels of sensationalist language: Josh was having no trouble whatsoever finding rich and beautiful women who wanted to be his girlfriend. And it was all her fault.
    “Are you gonna buy one of those or just crease ’em all?” the bloke behind the counter asked.
    She looked at him, still unable to form a coherent thought.
    “I wanted chocolate,” she finally said.
    “Looks like you need more than that, love. D’you need to sit down?” She nodded. He pointed at the door. “There’s a café across the road.”
    She put the magazine back on the shelf and grabbed a couple of bars of chocolate to take to the till. When she handed over a fifty, he didn’t take it. “You not got anything smaller?”
    “No, sorry, I need change to make a phone call.”
    “There’s a mobile phone shop next door, get a pay-as-you-go, save us all some trouble.”
    She abandoned the chocolate, desperate to get away from the reminders of her botched wish, and did as he suggested. Twenty minutes later she had a phone and had abandoned the plan to call her friend until she knew her new address in London.
    The café was her next stop and in minutes she was sitting down with a steaming hot chocolate in front of her. She was still shaken by Josh’s fame and wondered if he was really as happy as the magazines suggested. The magazine coverage didn’t fit with the Josh she knew. Did all those beautiful women love sci-fi films and books like he did? Had he opened up to them in the way he’d opened up to her? And what about his course? The pictures gave the impression of him being a London playboy – had he abandoned Manchester altogether?
    Cathy stared at the new phone on the table in front of her. She knew his mobile number off by heart. She even picked it up, thumb poised over the keys, but she kept stopping herself. What would she say? And she still hadn’t found a way to stay hidden yet, or protect him from the repercussions of her flight.
    And there was the new curse. When she was with Josh her father’s curse had made it impossible for her to undress near him. Now the Iris curse would make it impossible for them to even hold hands. Or kiss.
    Just let him