"Okay, so there has to be a story behind that," I said, as Lilly sat down. She looked at me, and I could tell that she had hoped I'd drop it. But it's me. And I just noticed that she has this ink picture on her back! I'm bound to ask, right?

"There's not," she shook her head, but it was fairly obvious that she was lying.

I rolled my eyes. "If you're going to lie, at least lie well. Now come on, tell me the story behind the... tattoo on your back. What is it, to begin with?"

"It's nothing," she shrugged, and picked up the remote, turning it up.

"Lilly," I raised my eyebrows. "Answer my question."

She turned to me, slightly pinker than usual. It was cute. "Okay. Fine. Um... it's a lily. And you're the first one to know about it, besides me, because even Miley doesn't know. I was seventeen, and feeling rebellious. So I got slightly tipsy, and went to a tattoo parlour, and tada. Woke up the next morning with bandages around my back."

"How does your friend not know?" I asked, amazed that she'd been able to hide it for four years.

"Miley doesn't spend a whole lot of time looking at my back," she replied, a smirk on her face. "Unlike you, obviously."

I tried to think of something to say. "Well... it's not like I could help it."

"Yeah. Right. Because out of everywhere in the room, my back was the only place that you could possibly look at," Lilly raised her eyebrows.

"Uh-huh," I said, lamely.

Lilly folded her arms, placing her drink of water on the carpet in front of her. "Okay, so now you know all about my tattoo, what about you? You have to have some hidden rebellion. Some dirty little secret."

"Me? No way. I'm practically perfect in every way," I lied.

"Right," she said, sarcastically.

I tried to fight the urge to look at her, because I knew she'd be looking at me in a way that just made me crack.

Don't look. Don't look.

"Fine," I groaned. Yes, I looked. And I cracked. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"Got any scars? Tattoos? Illegitimate love children?" Lilly asked. Okay, she was kidding about that last one, right?

I raised my eyebrows. "What?"

"Okay. Forget the last one," she said, and motioned for me to talk.

I thought about it. "Uh... well I have this huge scar on the back of my neck, from when I climbed up a tree... and fell off."

"Why were you climbing up a tree?" she asked, wrinkling her nose slightly.

"Why were you getting drunk?" I retorted.

Holding up her hands, Lilly laughed. "Touché."

I laughed, and took another spoonful of ice cream. "Let me see the tattoo."

"What?" She sounds surprised.

"Let me see your tattoo," I said, jabbing the plastic spoon back into the ice cream. It snapped. "See, I told you that these spoons were crap!"

She laughed; an amazing laugh. "I think you've seen enough of my tattoo! And you shouldn't jab it in so hard then!"

"I have not. I didn't even know what it was, did I? So I can't have seen too much. And I didn't," I said, looking at her.

"I'm not letting you see anymore of my tattoo," she shook her head defiantly. "And you obviously did, because otherwise it wouldn't have broken in half. And how are you gonna get the little spoon part out now? It's embedded in there."

I looked down at the ice cream, and wondered the same thing. Then I shrugged. "Like this." I dug my finger into the ice cream, and pulled out the bottom of the spoon. "Wanna lick the ice cream off now?"

"Not especially," she shook her head, her eyes glittering. "Not now it's had your fingers all over it."

I laughed. "Well I'm just gonna have to find another place to put it then, aren't I?"

"Yeah," she stuck her tongue out, and then took it off me, tentatively. She held it between her index finger and thumb, and dropped it into her glass of water. "I'm not drinking that now."

"I'd guessed," I said, as the broken spoon sunk to the bottom of the glass. "But you still have to show me your tattoo."

Her eyes were sparkling. "Okay. But you have to show me your scar."

"Fine," I shrugged.

She got up, and pulled her pyjama bottoms down slightly, revealing a small flower. "I'm just glad I picked this. The state I was in, I could've gotten up, and had a heart saying 'I love Mom'."

"Classy," I remarked, as she put her pyjamas back to where they'd been, and then sat back down.

"Now show me the scar," she demanded, as if it were something important. It was just a scar from where I fell off a tree when I was young.

I rolled my eyes, and lifted the back of my hair, showing her my scar. She lightly traced it with her finger, and I shivered.

"Sorry," she apologised, and sat back against the couch. "It just looked weird."

I sat back beside her. "It's fine."

Silence took the place of words for a minute. It wasn't an awkward silence, as such, but I could tell that we were both thinking of something to say.

"So... tell me about you," she said, just as I opened my mouth to ask her the exact same question. Great minds think alike, huh? Because that's all it is. Thinking alike. It's nothing else.

I shrugged. "Not much to tell really. Oliver Oken. Grew up in San Francisco. Got good grades, and then got into law school. Came to Los Angeles, began working at Weller and Dean. You turned up, and here we are. What about you?"

"My story is incredibly more interesting than that," Lilly laughed.

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, really," she challenged.

Motioning for her to begin talking, I took another spoon, and dug it into the ice cream, taking care not to break this one.

"Okay. Well, I have on younger brother. Michael. I remember when he was born, and how ugly he was. I didn't want a brother. Wanted a sister. And then Miley came to Malibu, and she became the sister that I never had. We totally did everything together. Until Jake Ryan came along, and they began going out. Took them long enough. She totally wouldn't admit that she liked him. But I managed to convince her to go out with him, and then she said yes, and so they've been together ever since. I had a pretty good few years in high school. Hanging out with Jake and... Hann... his friends, meant that we knew celebrities. Which was awesome. When we left school, me and Miley moved to LA, and got an apartment. Now we lived together, totally like sisters. And then I resigned work with Hannah Montana, and came to work for you, and here we are," she said, finishing her story as I had done.

I had been watching as she spoke; watching her eyes light up when talking about her best friend, and how she smiled when she talked about when she was young.

"See? So much more interesting," Lilly smiled.

I nodded. "Absolutely."

"Okay, so I'm going to be very, very nosy here, and say that your life story wasn't detailed enough," she said, obviously slightly hyper due to lack of sleep. "So you have to tell me one thing about yourself that you've not told anyone before."

Yeah. Because I'm going to do that. "Lilly, there's a reason that I won't have told anyone. So what makes you think I'm going to tell you?"

Lilly raised her eyebrows. "Because I asked you. And if you don't, you have to do a forfeit."

"What are we, twelve?" I asked, looking at her in disbelief.

She shrugged. "Might as well be. Come on!"

I thought for a bit. "Um... okay. Right. I had this teddy bear, when I was young, right?"

Lilly nodded, a look of intent interest on her face.

"And I used to believe that he was real. Like, amazingly real. You know, when I was asleep, he came alive? Like Woody and Buzz from Toy Story," I said, feeling weird as I said it. The whole point was that I'd never told anyone this before. And I probably never would have. Yet Lilly... she just seemed to be different. "I used to steal food from the kitchen to leave by him and feed him, and I used to read him books and everything."

"What happened?" she asked. "I mean, why'd you stop?"

I shrugged. "Grew out of it I guess. The way we all grow out of things."

She smiled at me. "That's sweet. That you used to feed your teddy. It really is."

"Thanks," I said, clearing my throat. It wasn't as hard speaking to her as I'd anticipated. Probably because she hadn't laughed, and told me that I was a freak. "What about you? What have you done that you've never told anyone before?"

"You mean besides the tattoo?"

I nodded. "And you can't use that as an excuse. Because I know how you women work, and you'll try to wriggle out of it by saying 'you saw my tattoo, so I shouldn't have to tell you!'"

"Ugh."

I knew that I'd been right, and that that was what she'd been planning to do. "Fine. Um... okay. But you have to promise not to laugh, because this is so stupid, and the reason I haven't ever told anyone, is because I just know they'll laugh."

"I won't laugh."

"Okay. Um... when I was like, four, I used to think... I used to honestly think... that my parents were aliens. Don't laugh! I used to believe that when I had gone to bed, and my baby brother had been put to sleep, they used to take off their human suits, and speak to each other in their alien language. I used to sit at the top of the stairs, way after my bedtime, and try to hear them talking in a dialect that I didn't understand. Sometimes I got so close to being caught by my mom or dad, and used to run to bed so fast, because I thought that they might kill me with their alien stun-guns. It went on for ages, until I just realised how stupid it was one day. But I've never told anyone about it, because of the stupidity of it."

She looked embarrassed as she said this. I smiled at her; her story was much sweeter than mine. I tried to imagine her as a four-year-old, sitting on the top step, clutching the banister and trying to hear her parents talking like aliens. It was cute.

"See, now you think I'm a total freak, don't you?" she rambled. "You think I'm a freak, and you don't want to be working with a freak, but seriously, I only thought it for like, a year. God, that made things worse, didn't it? A whole year. Ugh!"

I laughed. "Lilly, it's fine. I don't think you're a freak. I think you were a kid, and we all did things like that. I fed my soft toy, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but that was cute. I was just a weirdo."

"No, yours was cute," I replied. "In it's own special way."

She laughed. "Well thanks."

I turned my attention back to the TV screen, where an Oasis video was playing. Lilly smiled, and sung along with it.

"I said maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me, and after all, you're my wonderwall..."

I watched as she closed her eyes and sung, as if the song transported her back to a place, as songs sometimes do. They remind you of things. Take you back to places.

This song... this song will now always bring me back to here.

I am soooooo sorry. So. So. So. So. So. Sorry. But, as some of you may have heard, flooding in England is bad, and I haven't been directly hit, but some of my family have. They've been with us, and so the computer has been off access due to the amount of e-mails that have had to be sent to workplaces, friends... all that jazz. Anyway, the fuss has died down, so I managed to get online. I promise I'll update as often as I can, but until this mess sorts out, it might not be once every day. I'll try.

But, I have been doing productive things. I finished the last Harry Potter book in 11 hours! Which has to be a record, for me anyway. But I shan't spoil it.