I hope people are still enjoying this. The Renters disappear for a couple of chapters now but will reappear soon.

'Catherine! You look amazing! You've lost so much weight!' Olivia, one of the vague boarding school acquaintances I'd somehow kept in touch with over the years, greeted me. It was strange but I'd never noticed how much Maureen reminded me of her, with her over-exaggerated enthusiasm and gushing words. 'Is that tan real?'

I knew I looked good. The late September sun was keeping my hard-won tan at almost its optimum strength and my newly-refreshed hair was back to its golden shining best. Even now, almost three weeks after my PEP treatment had finished, my appetite had decreased so much that I was easily weighing in at seven pounds less than I'd ever been before in my adult life. Everything about my figure seemed to have suddenly fallen into place.

'So.'

I looked up from the coffee which had appeared as if by magic in front of me. Such levels of service, once a part of my everyday life, now seemed strange and wonderful. I nodded my thanks to the waiter who had known my order before I did, and then frowned at Olivia. 'So?'

'So what's been going on?' Olivia rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. 'Come on, we've all be dying to know! You just... disappeared! It was like one of those films, you know, when someone gets kidnapped or something.'

'You knew I was going to New York.'

'But not like this! Catherine, you totally vanished! Harriet and Robert were over there for the summer too and they said they never saw you, never even heard you were there!' Olivia shook her head. 'What happened?'

It was the one question which I had felt lurking around the edges of every conversation I'd had since I'd returned to England just over a month ago. My parents had done well to avoid it, and even James and Amelia hadn't alluded to my summer madness apart from a few references to 'whilst you were away'. To all intents and purposes it had been a normal extended holiday, only one which resulted in bringing me back looking thinner and more tired than anyone would have expected.

Briefly, I flirted with the idea of explaining it all to Olivia, revealing the truth about Alphabet City and working as a waitress, having a sort-of-boyfriend with a heroin addiction and an incurable illness, and having to take drugs myself to help ward off the same. Several times during September I'd been tempted to drop those bombshells into conversation, perversely curious to see how my parents would react. Every time I'd manage to quash the devilish voice inside of me, and so I did again this time. They weren't the kind of memories to be shared so lightly.

'I just wanted to get away for a while. On my own.' I sipped my coffee as casually as I could.

'And then?'

'And then I got bored.' I shrugged. 'It was time to come home again.'

It should have been obvious to a real friend that there was more to it than a simple case of wanderlust and ennui. In my world, people didn't jet off to other countries and drop off the radar entirely. There'd be postcards and phone calls and big homecoming get-togethers. This was the first time I'd socialised since I'd been back in the country. Olivia should have seen straight through my nonchalance.

To give her some credit, she did persist in the topic of conversation, even if she didn't interrogate my answers. She had more about her than some of the people I knew in England. 'Your parents were really concerned, you know, Catherine. My mother said yours looked like she'd aged several years at their anniversary party.' The usual catty comments I'd managed to avoid for most of the summer seemed to have survived. 'Is it true your father sold your flat?'

'He's rented it out.' And that was enough to show me his extreme displeasure in how I'd behaved this year. My father thought in things, things that could be valued in pounds and pence. The return flight home had been his way of forgiving me, but removing the use of my flat, if only for the next six months, was the price I'd had to pay for that. It seemed a reasonable forfeit to pay. 'I've just been over there to pick some things up before the new people move in.' I'd expected to feel more when I set foot in the flat, some sense of loss and sadness that someone else would be using the power shower and sleeping in my bed. Instead, I'd been able to close the door behind me without a single regret.

Of course, to Olivia, such steps as my father had taken were close to the end of the world. 'Where are you staying?' Her mouth fell agape before she added in a stage whisper. 'Oh my God, are you staying with Sam?'

'No.' The sooner that rumour was quashed the better. Sam was one topic that my family hadn't been afraid to raise, albeit tentatively. Reminders that he'd phoned or called around or that somebody they knew had seen him at a restaurant last Thursday came thick and fast, along with suggestions that maybe I could return the favours. It was a topic I was completely unwilling to broach however, and so I moved the conversation on. 'I'm staying with my parents.'

'In Kent?' I may as well have said Bosnia judging by Olivia's reaction. 'But... what will you do down there?'

It was true that Kent didn't have much of a social scene, at least not one that Olivia or I would be involved in. My parents' house was tucked away in a particularly quiet corner of the county, surrounded by leafy countryside and a lot of cows. Apart from a few horse riders and the postman, it was easy to go for days without seeing anybody. For the past month, it had been just what I wanted, and I couldn't see that changing anytime soon, no matter what my parents' feelings on the matter were.

'Nothing much, I suppose.' Nothing Olivia would understand. She would never think of spending her days reading or going for walks. The family Labradors hadn't had so much exercise in a long time – they were almost looking trim again. I'd even half-heartedly picked up a paintbrush for the first time in over three years. It was true that no paint had been on the end of it, and after five minutes of playing with the bristles I'd abandoned it again, but it had been something. With all of that, I hadn't had time to miss my old lives, either of them.

'But you're coming out tonight?' Olivia nodded eagerly. 'It's Diane's birthday and she's booked out this amazing bar...'

'I can't make tonight.' I glanced at my watch. 'My brother's picking me up soon. Sorry.'

After that, we made polite conversation, as I asked after her sister who had just graduated from Oxford, but there seemed little left to add. If I wasn't attending Diane's birthday or Petra's hen night or Christina and Matthew's engagement party, we had nothing in common. It was something that was happening increasingly often in The Life of Catherine Carter Part Three.