'This is what you get for trying to steal my goddess's man!'

I was flat on my back in a spreading lake of my own blood, and the man standing over me had his face twisted up like a Halloween mask, spitting as he talked. 'Now my goddess can finally marry the man she deserves. Fletcher. Hollywood's brightest new star.'

Not exactly the Tuesday I'd had in mind. Tuesday was meant to be the day I went public with my fiancé — Fletcher. Given that my fiancé was an actor whose new show had just landed at number one on Netflix the second it dropped, he'd promised me that the moment that happened, he'd finally tell the world about us.

So there I'd been, in four-inch heels and a designer dress I'd rented for an eye-watering sum, all set to plant a proper French kiss on my fiancé in front of the cameras. Half an hour earlier his assistant had texted telling me to skip the front entrance — 'use the staff alley round the side, avoid the paps.' So I'd avoided the paps. I'd avoided security. I'd avoided every single human being who might have saved my life, and walked, with pinpoint accuracy, straight into a knife.

Before I'd even collected the jealous glares of every woman who'd ever wanted me dead, I'd collected a stab wound from my fiancé's scandal-mate's deranged fan instead.

Bloody hell. Was the boutique going to keep my deposit for the late return, drag me to small claims court, and wreck my credit so badly I couldn't even rent a car? Absolutely not. I loved road trips too much for that.

I tried to reach for him, hoping he'd have a change of heart and get me to a hospital. I swore I'd tell the police I'd stabbed myself, I was that excited for what was coming.

But he just gave a contemptuous little smile, tossed the knife down beside me, and walked off. Calm as anything, like he hadn't just committed murder, like he'd only just finished slicing a nice ripe watermelon. He stepped straight through my blood on his way out, leaving a trail of rust-red footprints all the way to the mouth of the alley. But God — was the man an idiot?

Fingerprints on the knife. A trail of bloody footprints leading off into the distance. The police wouldn't need half an hour to find him. If I hadn't been busy dying, I'd have laughed out loud.

Wait.

We hadn't gone public yet. You could count on one hand the people who knew Fletcher and I were together. How did this fan know that the woman who'd 'stolen his goddess's man' was me?

The thought pricked at me like a cold needle, and then got shoved aside by something more urgent — I still had a job to do. I had to save my own life. I couldn't begin to imagine how my fiancé, how my parents, would survive this shadow of grief otherwise.

Right. My phone. Except... it had skittered nearly two metres away, onto the smooth concrete of the side alley.

What little blood I had left kept draining out, taking my body heat and my will to live along with it. Still, I dragged myself forward, agonising inch by agonising inch, leaving a lovely crimson trail behind me. In my head, I apologised in advance to whichever poor sod found my Chevrolet decorated with my remains first thing tomorrow morning.

Just a bit further. I could almost touch it.

A wave of nausea hit, followed by a proper head-spinner. My legs gave up the fight before the rest of me did. Still, I stretched my right arm out until I thought it might pop from the socket. My fingertips brushed the phone. Cold. Hard. So close.

Just call 911, I told myself. Patch me up, slap on a plaster, job done.

The phone buzzed.

For one glorious, deluded second, I thought it had read my mind and dialled the ambulance itself.

Of course it hadn't.

The vibration sent it skittering a few more centimetres across the smooth concrete, and in that moment it felt exactly like the universe flipping me off with one enormous middle finger.

The screen lit up. I saw the message.

'Let's break up.'

From my fiancé. Fletcher.

What? Was I hallucinating from blood loss? It wasn't possible. You could've told me monsters were real and I'd have believed you sooner than that text. Fletcher and I weren't some ordinary couple — we'd been together since primary school. We'd moved from our hometown to LA together to chase his acting dream; on the days he couldn't cover rent, I was the one who'd quietly picked up the slack. Our families were close too. His parents had said, more than once, how much they were looking forward to our wedding. I'd dreamed about it — dreamed about myself in a wedding dress, and if I'd actually worn one I'd have knocked every single one of them dead. I wasn't joking about that.

We'd even discussed the wedding itself: it had to be in spring, because spring was when we'd met. He'd said he'd fly in my favourite Hollywood star to officiate.

No. That break-up text had to be some deranged fan who'd hacked Fletcher's phone. I had to find out the truth.

Summoning every last scrap of strength, I made a blind grab for the phone. But it was slick with blood, slippery as a bar of wet soap, and I couldn't get a grip on the damn thing.

Why, oh why, had I gone for that manicure last week? If I'd grown my nails out long like claws, I'd have got a proper hold on it.

I felt the last ounce of oomph drain out of me right along with the last trickle of blood. My hand flopped.

The alley. The staff entrance. A fan who knew who I was. A break-up text timed to the minute.

If I'd still had blood to spare for my brain, maybe I could have strung those things together into a line.

But I didn't.

My eyelids weighed a ton. Then two tons. Then five.

Lights out.

* * *

'Has she replied? Is she going to kick off? Is she going to run to the press?' Elowen, the mad fan's goddess, asked, anxious.

'No, I've only just texted. Give it a minute,' my fiancé, Fletcher, replied, tense.

'I still can't work out how the press got hold of those photos,' Elowen said, sounding regretful.

'You're sure you didn't tip anyone off?' There was a note of uncertainty in Fletcher's voice. 'We were the only ones who knew about that hotel.'

'You can search me! Why on earth would I do that?' Elowen shrieked. 'And anyway, those weren't even our photos — they were doctored, but the press won't hear it.' Then she stopped, and her voice softened. '...Maybe this is fate, Fletcher. You weren't planning to break things off with Jan, and then the press just happens to release photos of us together. Maybe we're meant to just let it out into the open.'

Fletcher stared at her, disbelieving. 'Are you mad? The fans will decide I'm a cheating scumbag. Everything I've built, gone, just like that.'

'I swear, Jan will understand. She's just a primary school teacher, she can't possibly understand your ambitions — no, wait, don't you always say she's the one who understands you best? Then I'm sure she'll understand this too. We can give her a big payoff, make up for what she's lost.' Elowen was patient, coaxing.

Was death supposed to be this noisy?

I'd expected a bit of peace and quiet. Instead I got my fiancé and his new girlfriend nattering away on the sofa. Oh, and his hand had just landed between her thighs.

Some afterlife this was turning out to be.

Hang on. What about today's announcement? What about the dress I'd rented? What about the week I'd spent practising French kisses in the mirror? Judging by their conversation, it was as if none of it had ever happened at all. I'd got dressed up, rushed off excitedly to an appointment — that had apparently been cancelled before I'd even got there.

Oh, and I'd also popped along to my own death while I was at it.

'I just can't bear it,' Elowen said, trembling. Her perfect heart-shaped face had gone an unusually becoming shade of pale — the sort of fragile, helpless ingénue look that makes people want to wrap her in a big fluffy towel and feed her a bowl of hot soup. 'You know that ache, wanting to be with you every single night and not being able to? I love you, Fletcher. If this keeps up I'm going to kill myself.'

Fletcher promptly wrapped a long, manly arm around her. The same arm that used to knot my scarf for me on chilly mornings. Now it was busy kneading another woman's shoulder blade. 'No. I'll find Jan as soon as I can, talk to her face to face, and I'll give her money.'

'Really? You'd really do that for me?' Elowen's face did a lightning-quick costume change, delight flooding in.

'Mm. I know what it feels like to fall in love with someone, and I know what it feels like to fall out of it. I'm sick of all Jan's bullshit concern. She doesn't understand — none of that flies in Hollywood. What I need is someone whose soul actually matches mine. That's you, Elowen.' Fletcher did his own quick change too, his whole face curdling with disgust the second he mentioned me, then flooding with tenderness the second he looked at her.

A smile crept across Elowen's face — the exact smile of a witch watching Snow White take a bite of the poisoned apple. Then she peeled off her own clothes and straddled his lap, stark naked. 'Baby, I need you. Now. Inside me.'

'My eyes!' I clapped my hands over my face and bolted from the living room. But their moaning chased after me like a ghost. Even though, at this particular moment, I was the ghost.

Oh, for God's sake, how was this even happening? I'd come to confirm that my fiancé's phone had been hacked. And what did I get for my trouble?

We'd been joined at the hip since we were in nappies, dated for seven years, got engaged. In all that time, he couldn't find a spare five minutes to say, 'Jan, I'm having second thoughts'?

No question about it — he was too busy climbing into bed with his new bit on the side. Tears rolled down my face — no! I refused to cry over this bastard.

I wheeled round and made a beeline for the front door. Mum and Dad would be waiting for our nightly video call. I never missed it. If I couldn't ring them, maybe I could, you know, go 'haunt' them a bit. Gently. Lovingly, of course.

I hadn't worked out the mechanics yet, but step one was getting out of this house.

I almost reached for the door handle before remembering I was dead. Ghosts could walk through walls. Everyone knew that. I'd seen it on telly. So I marched straight at the door, and instinctively shut my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was... still on the wrong side of the door. Like a great daft lemon.

What the actual hell?

I reached out to touch the wood panelling. Felt nothing but air. I grabbed for the doorknob — my fingers closed straight through it. I stepped forward and my foot sank into the door, but the rest of me didn't follow, as if some invisible bungee cord had snagged me round the waist and refused to let me budge another inch.

I don't believe in giving up that easily. I tried the kitchen. The stairs. The window. Every time, once I'd gone a certain distance, that cord yanked me straight back. It took me three separate collisions with the wall before I worked out the pattern: I was penned inside an invisible circle, and the dead centre of that circle was the man currently going at it on the sofa.

I whirled round and glared at Fletcher. He was still going at Elowen from behind.

I stared at his stupidly handsome, two-timing, one-step-from-cashing-in-on-being-a-grieving-widower face. Of all the men back home in Bayside, I had to end up tethered to this one.

'Are you doing this? Am I trapped here because of you?'