It sounded cliché, but there it was, when Darcy had walked out of the room, her life had got darker. On the plane, she found herself remembering the bright sunshine of their day out in San Francisco. It had been so bright, she'd had to borrow Gigi's over the top sunglasses and he had smiled as she pretended to be an old style Hollywood starlet and she had appreciated the chance to see his smile properly in its full blown glory as she watched from behind the darkness of the shades. They had given her quite a few opportunities in fact and she had found herself looking at him far more than was usual. She found she enjoyed observing him when he thought no-one was looking. It was the same when she re-watched the videos he was in, she could see his little reactions to what she was saying, his little twitches that betrayed the urge to smile and his relaxation in the later videos.

She'd found herself re-watching her videos more than she thought was normal since she'd got home. It rained and when it wasn't raining, it was misty and cloudy and just depressing, as if she wasn't depressed enough already. She lounged around in her least attractive clothes, wanting comfort and warmth more than anything. It meant that when she dozed off, as was quite common if she was in her room, she was warm and comfortable and didn't wake up feeling too disgusting. She knew that Jane was worried about her but she couldn't find it in herself to care. When she dreamed, she was restless, seeing him out of the corner of her eye or feeling his gentle touch on her back as he comforted her. She would wake, longing to feel him near her, remembering the emptiness of the bench next to her after he'd left the room.

The emptiness of the other side of her bench mocked her. She tried sitting in the middle to hide the space where he had fitted so perfectly. Jane and Charlotte sat next to her and tried to help with costume theatre but it didn't seem to work, either for Lizzie or the viewers. Darcy had been such a good partner and now she felt spoilt for anyone else. If it hadn't been for Charlotte insisting on regular updates, she felt she could have stopped filming vlogs so easily, yet at some points, they seemed to be the only thing tethering her to the ground. The drama surrounding Lydia, her mother's consequent reaction and her father's non-reaction in the form of retreating so firmly behind his books and newspapers that she felt his face would never see the light of day, had all filled her with a kind of longing for the relative sanity of Pemberley and the Darcys. As soon as she'd arrived home, she'd wanted to go back, retreat to the safety of her new friends and run from the madness of her family. All she wanted was to go back to the sunny day in San Francisco with Gigi and Darcy, when she didn't know anything about Lydia and she was happy.

Sometimes she thought that she wouldn't be able to keep going but there was always something to do, a small incident to document in her videos, a cake to bake, shopping to do, a date to help Jane prepare for. Lydia finally emerged from her room after the website mysteriously disappeared, and now there was one more sister for Jane to feed up with cakes and brownies. Lizzie secretly lamented the absence of snickerdoodles but was secretly relieved that even Jane still seemed to have unhealed wounds. The sisters fell into less prickly banter and she sort of felt like they were proper sisters again, trying to ease each other through their various injuries at the hands of the opposite sex.

One day, she woke with a lighter heart and a less raging mind. Unusually, she had slept for most of the night and Darcy had only invaded her dreams as a comforting presence rather than a disturbing one. For once she bothered to wear jeans rather than her pyjamas and she made herself a real breakfast, feeling unusually hungry. The doorbell rang and, confused, she went to open the door. Next to a smartly dressed Bing, there he was. She noted he looked almost dressed down, minus a tie but with braces and with the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up. She smiled. The sun shone.