This is just a quick name guide with a very basic who’s related to who. When it says 18, that’s a sort of bracket, I haven’t put in whether they’re 18 or 19 depending on their birthdays and when the story starts
Livia Llywarch- 18, Welsh & Venezuelan
Natasha Santos- 18, one of Livia’s best friends, Mexican and British
Cristina Santos- 18, Natasha’s twin, one of Livia’s best friends, Mexican and British
Nathaniel Grant (Nate)- 18, one of Natasha, Cristina and Livia’s best friends, Livia’s boyfriend, American and British
William (Will) Hayes- 18, the last member of this group, Natasha’s boyfriend, British and French
Alessa Hunter- 18, Will’s cousin, British and French
Jay Hunter, 18, Alessa’s twin, British and French
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Dai and Luis Llywarch- Livia’s dads
Lupita- Natasha and Cristina’s younger sister
Rachel- William’s younger sister
Clara- Nate’s younger sister
(yes I do realise everyone seems to have a younger sister)
Dawn and Nick- Alessa and Jay’s characters
Richard (Dawn’s older brother) and Holly- Will and Rachel’s parents
This went way too out of control and I don’t know who else to add now
Also- in relation to the pride flags- they’re not there if the character is LGBTQ+ or not- though for Cristina it is. They all feel quite strongly about it- the current hate laws, equal rights etc. But for Alessa- she would have it there for Jay, her twin.
Livia, no stranger to missing school, but it’s never had such an effect.
They say the saddest of all family sorrows is a parent letting go of their child- their child’s death.
Imagine a girl of 14, her long light brown hair the envy of all her classmates, watching it all fall out. Crying because she’s young teenager after all, even with her other problems this is a small vanity she didn’t want to lose, and it’s a very real indication of what is happening.
Imagine a girl of 14, taking for granted her young limbs, flexible and fit, running around her back garden, or the streets of her town. Imagine her losing her mobility.
To begin with, the doctors don’t look her squarely in the eye when they deliver the news, they talk just over her shoulder to her dads. Then there’s one who sits by her side, talking to her directly as he explains everything that’s going on. Breast cancer.
They found it fairly early, they say, but they don’t manage to stop it spreading to her spine, and free Livia is caged. School becomes an ‘if you can’, and 14 year old Livia finds herself missing weeks at a time.
It doesn’t matter. She’s just 14. Only Year 9. She picks her GCSE options, misses the first half term of Year 10.
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It doesn’t exactly feel like a distant memory at 18, but after remission, she misses less school, and working for a scholarship for a University she wouldn’t be able to get into otherwise. She’ll go into medicine- not just because of her own story, but the hundreds she knew in her time off school.
Imagine an earthquake of an event, something so disruptive she is turned upside down. Fighting a psychotic mass murderer and finding out your faerie heritage puts A levels to the back of your mind. But then she has missed so much school, and realises while lying in a hospital bed that while she may be saving lives, she could be wrecking her own. She’s missed school before, but never with such disastrous consequences.
there is magic and most people aren’t fully human- they’re a mix of human and types of faerie, or angel, that sort of thing. Or they’re witches. I just realised that wasn’t clear at all. You see at the beginning of the novel, none of the main characters but Alessa and Jay know that.
It just showed up in her queue and she started it because she was curious, but the memories overtook it when it got into it and by halfway through she and Natasha were dancing around the kitchen to it. Lupita came in to make herself a drink and they dragged her in too.
Haunted ofc- such a Nate song (Wonderland is up next)
He’s got two Youtube tabs open bc he’s got two queues and they can’t mix because one’s to do with school and the other is Shadow and Bone deleted scenes
Pptx- it’s catch up from a maths lesson
Two tab groups because he forms attachments to them and he’s going to go back to them soon, he swears
Office ofc
Revision excel spreadsheet- it’s a calendar of sorts, he found it easier than making a proper calendar
Pomofocus
Cognito is a life line with Maths
The last tab is a search on some very complicated trig thing (Nate’s the maths guy, not me)
Natasha’s coat is olive green, and she got it for her 16th birthday from Cristina. It’s waterproof, but not warm enough for winter. On the back are red roses intertwined with green ivy, all around a space in which is her name, in beautiful calligraphy. There is a pocket in the inside lining, where she keeps her card/money, one on her arm which she loves but rarely keeps things in. The outside pockets have her phone, keys, timetable for that term at her dance school, earphones. When she’s going to see Will busking, she keeps change in there as well. The hood is detachable, which she thought so so cool when she first got it, and though she doesn’t always remember it’s like that, when she does she gets another little rush of joy.
She feels confident when she puts it on, so she likes to wear it as often as she can.
Has been singing ‘someone to call mine (demo)’ by Chloe Ament non-stop the last 3 days. (She’s really good at singing) She was a pjo kid definitely, and this song is the best kind of nostalgia. Also it’s so pretty and fits her voice. She 100% made everyone listen to this at least 5 times already.
“Where did it come from?” They all asked, as Dai drove it to their house, a week after Nate’s 16th birthday. He had agreed to keep it in their garage, knowing Nate’s Pa wouldn’t want the car just sitting there until Nate got his licence. ‘A friend’ apparently, someone Luis knew who owned a garage, who sold used cars. They’d taken Nate to buy a car, knowing how much he wanted one, and the look in his eyes as he sat in the passenger seat of his new car proved how much he loved it.
Then, he was always running round to look at it, to learn how to drive with Dai, or Luis- as long as they stayed within their little property. Or Dai would take him out to a car park, and Nate would learn how to start the car, drive it out a little, with Livia watching proud in the backseat. Livia joked he came more to see the car than he did her, his girlfriend, but she was pleased. The practice paid off, and Nate got his driver’s licence still aged 17.
Nate’s car was a treasure trove. In the passenger side door there was the Faber Medical Dictionary, half as thick as a hand, and so old and faded it looked like an archaic heirloom. The passenger glove box was full of CDs from different times and genres- it was a collection, a shrine, to everyone’s different personalities. Both dashboard glove boxes were full of different people’s medication- mainly just half used blisters of Paracetamol, and little bits of paper. The one over the steering wheel had Nate’s favourite photo of them all, and a stunning drawing of the car done by Will. Hanging from the rear view mirror was a tree charm (see photo), where rainbow stones had gone where the leaves would be. He’d picked that up the first Pride they went to.
Livia and he talked about the wedding they might have one day, jokingly but both secretly hoping it might happen. “Shall we have the car there?” She said, as they sat in the old car. “I know the something old, new borrowed and blue is supposed to be on the wedding dress, but, the car could be our something old and the something blue.” “What, drive away in it?” He asked, leaning back, drinking in the sunset. She shrugged, and he laughed. “We could put it at the back, where we’d have another row.” They laughed for a moment over the image. “Genuinely though, we could have it there, drive away in it, or whatever.”
Who would imagine he’d only had it a little over 2 years. When Natasha got the call that a body had been found in Will’s rubbish, how else were they going to get there than the little BMW? Where else was Cristina going to curl, crying, when first Rhea, and then Saanvi left her? Where else was Natasha going to fall asleep on the way back from a dance show, everyone else strung up on the beauty of her movements? Or Will, violin and little sister in hand, laughing with Nate discussing the latest Taylor Swift song, or movie they’d seen. Where else would Livia be but that passenger seat, so they could set the world to rights, and he could look over and fall in love all over again? And where would Nate be but behind that wheel, when the car was better than home, and he’d take his sister out, Clara pointing at the turns she wanted to take until they were well and truly far away?
“Little car,” Nate whispered, pulling up to Richard’s lodgings, capturing his tree charm briefly between his fingers. “My lovely car.”
