Lizzie sat at the kitchen counter, sipping on a red crème soda, flicking through a folder that Dr Gardiner had given her, full of options for finishing her independent study. No matter how many times she thought she'd found a good company to shadow, she would always look at who they were affiliated with and nearly all of them had connections with Pemberley Digital. That's just the kind of company Pemberley was though. They knew everyone; they had an egg in every single basket.

She wished they didn't. For the last few weeks she'd managed to avoid thinking about William Darcy at all, but with Charlotte's return, she'd been made to revisit the Pemberley videos and had been forced to see that there might have been something there. Lizzie didn't want to think about that. She wished that they still hated each other and that he'd never given her a reason to like him at all. She wished she could just go back to dressing up and making fun of him without feeling guilty or wrong.

Lizzie didn't want to see any of those videos again. She didn't want to get her hopes up by seeing the chemistry between them again. She'd left in a rush and Darcy didn't want to have anything to do with a family that had ties with Wickham. Lizzie definitely didn't blame him for that.
She groaned and shut the folder, deciding, for about the 5th time, that she would deal with it tomorrow.

She climbed the stairs back to her room where she planned to spend the rest of this cold, rainy night reading Harry Potter. She wasn't at all against returning to the series that she loved so much as a child and if she was going to procrastinate from making a decision then returning to Hogwarts was definitely the best way to do it. As she jumped up the last two steps, she heard the front door creak open.

"Lydia? Are you home?" She called down.

"Yeah! It is like, crazy weather out there sis, I hope you're not planning to go out."

"Nope, was just going to go read."

"Of course you were, you're a giant nerd, I don't know why I expected anything else."

"Shut up. There's a bottle of soda in the fridge for you if you want it. And I'll be in my room if you need me."

"Cool beans sis, thanks!" A few seconds later Lizzie heard a squeal of delight and the words "Ooooh red crème!"

Smiling, Lizzie finished the walk to her room and settled down to read.

Three hours later, the sounds of Lydia's sugar high had subsided and Lizzie was halfway through Chamber of Secrets. She put the book down and sighed. She was making good progress through the books, but she was having a hard time giving them her full attention. Something was just niggling at the back of her mind and she couldn't get rid of it. She didn't even know what it was really.

"Hey…can I come in?" Came Lydia's voice from outside her door.

"Sure!" Lizzie replied, pulling herself upright in bed. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just.. like, you know when you get heaps of sugar in you and you go crazy and then you have like, the come down?"

"Having seen it in you many a time, yes, I know it well." Lizzie laughed.

"Yeah, well my come down has just gotten me thinking and so I thought I'd talk to you about it." Lydia flopped onto the bed and pulled some of the pillows towards herself.

"Yeah, that's cool, what type of stuff? George stuff or school or friends or what?"

"Not sure… kind of all of it?" Lydia took a deep breath. "So I've been talking to Gigi a bit and she told me how she kind of fell off the grid when he screwed her over and then she just threw herself into studies and working and she's managed to get over it?"

Lizzie's eyes widened slightly in confusion. "Hold up for a second there. You're in touch with Gigi? How?! I mean, I have her cell, but how are you talking to her?"

"We just DM on Twitter, obvs?!"

"Oh my goodness. Of course! Gigi has a Twitter, how the hell did I forget that?"

"I don't know? She's had it for ages, but I only started following her when I found out about everything with George."

"Sorry, right, George, what were you starting to say?" Lizzie tried to put this new information about the youngest Darcy sibling out of her head.

"Well I was just going to say like, I know how you were involved in heaps of clubs and stuff at school and college and I was wondering if you had any recommendations because I need to throw myself right in and not think about this whole thing anymore. Seriously, it's effecting my day-today living and it shouldn't be!" Lydia laughed and rolled her eyes, "You know, I can't even eat peaches anymore. This whole thing is causing me to eat differently. There's something seriously wrong with that."

Lizzie shook her head. "Lydia, it was a big deal and no one expects you to get over it like a bad head cold."

"Well, yeah, I totes get that, but how am I ever going to move on if I'm totally mopey and drama-filled all the time. I just need to go back to being normal and having proper fun." She shifted her position on the bed, her frustration with still having to deal with the scandal is obvious these days, in how she fidgets more and is uncertain. She's no longer the Lydia that Lizzie knows, full of life and diving head first into anything and everything. She's getting there, but she doesn't trust so easily.

Lizzie thinks for a minute, trying to come up with some ideas for Lydia.

"You know what, I'm pretty sure Mom still has all of those booklets from your orientation. I don't know what kind of clubs or societies there are at your college, but if you go ask her for the booklets, you can see what there is and then I can tell you if I've heard of them and we can go from there?"

"Sounds good sis! Thanks! I think that's all I wanna talk about right now… I don't want to think more. Do you want some potato chips?"

"Um… No thanks, I'm just going to try to finish this book." Lizzie gestured to Chamber of Secrets, still lying open on the bed.

"You've read that book like, 17 times… I don't get how you can do that!"

"You get something new from it every time you re-read it… it's fun!"

"You are the biggest nerd."

"I know. I will wear that title proudly, I've told you."

Lydia laughed as she closed the door behind her and Lizzie listened to her footsteps going down the stairs. It was weird not having Jane around anymore. Lizzie missed the relaxed indie music wafting in from Jane's room and the smell of her homemade candles.

Lizzie leant back into her pillows, picked up her book again and tried to concentrate. 10 minutes later she'd pulled her laptop onto her bed and was waiting for it to start up. There was no way she could go back to reading now that she'd remembered that Gigi had a Twitter. She wasn't quite sure why she hadn't thought of this before…or why she wasn't following her already.

Since Lizzie had left Pemberley, she had checked Darcy's Twitter but there had been nothing. She didn't want to make the first contact, she didn't know if he even wanted to have anything to do with her anymore. She just wanted to hear something, anything, to put her mind at ease. Now that she remembered Gigi had Twitter, she could finally see if anything had been going on.

Lizzie clicked on the search bar and typed in 'Gigi Darcy'.