The Guilty Friend
JOANNE SEFTON

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Joanne Sefton 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

Joanne Sefton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008294465

Version: 2019-05-10

For my family.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1
Karen
2019

The recipe book was well thumbed throughout, but there was one page that it naturally fell open to every time: Crespelle con Pollo. The Italian chicken pancake dish had been a family favourite for years. So much so, that Karen only really used the book out of habit – if needed, she could have made it blindfolded. The recipe took some time, granted, what with having to make the thin pancakes, cool them, and then stuff them with the chicken mixture, before pouring over the cream sauce and baking in the oven. She enjoyed cooking, though, and she particularly liked meals like this, which she could put together during the peaceful daytime hours. When the girls came back from school, she could focus on them, drinking her daughters in just as enthusiastically as they would inhale the tantalising, savoury aroma that would, by that point, be filling the kitchen.

A glance at the wall planner told her that Tasha’s friend Claire would be coming over. Just as well she checked so she could bulk up the quantities a bit and make a generous salad and then Claire could stay if she wanted to. She probably would. Karen prided herself on the fact that both Tasha and Callie’s friends seemed to enjoy spending time in the house. Her eldest daughter, Evie, was at university now, but she would doubtless bring a whole new set of friends home come the holidays.

Tasha and Claire would do their homework together and then probably hang out upstairs; their GCSEs were looming in a few months and they were both conscientious girls. Callie would get home around the same time as her older sister, but then would need a lift to her dance class after dinner. Karen frowned. There was little point in coming home during the class, and she always intended to kill the time by going for a run, but now, halfway through February, her January fitness resolution was fading fast, and she’d never really liked running in the dark.

She always found herself getting impatient at this time of year. Although the days were creeping longer, it felt like they’d never actually get to spring. Perhaps she’d just take her book instead. The reception area was comfortable enough, and you could glimpse the girls through the glass door. It was sweet that Callie still liked to catch her watching and would happily break her drill to give Karen a cheery wave and a grin full of braces. Yes, that’s what she’d do.

The TV on the wall wittered on as she collected the ingredients for the pancake batter. She didn’t listen really, but she liked something on in the background. She considered turning it off but checked the clock and realised it would be the lunchtime news in five minutes so decided to leave them be. Without really thinking, she whisked together her eggs and milk and methodically weighed the flour, adding a pinch of salt. The key was to add the liquid gradually and beat it well; that way you avoided lumps. As the opening notes of the news programme sounded, she picked the bowl up, nestling it in one arm while she whisked with the other, taking a few steps across the kitchen to catch the headlines.

It was clear from the newsreader’s frown and sombre tone that something bad had happened.

A bomb on a tube train.

She put the bowl down for a moment, to notch up the volume, then picked it up again. She resumed her stirring automatically as she listened to the report.

‘… an incident was first reported on the Northern Line, between Highgate and East Finchley, at around half past nine this morning.’

The presenter in the studio handed over to a windswept journalist standing in front of the station. An ‘East Finchley’ sign, with the distinctive, round London transport logo, was prominent in the background.

‘… several injured but no reports of fatalities on this quiet service, which was travelling out of central London. We can only speculate on how much more serious this incident could have been if the device had detonated earlier, on the train’s inbound journey, at the peak of rush hour. The police have made no comment yet, but there is clearly conjecture that we are dealing here with a terrorist incident, which has – thankfully – not gone according to plan. Nonetheless, we saw scenes of panic as the train was evacuated at East Finchley station earlier this morning. This footage and photography comes from public mobile phone recordings, so we apologise for the quality, but it gives a sense of the scale of the incident here earlier today …’

The visuals cut again, this time to a jerky recording of people fleeing the station. The whole place was filled with smoke and debris, along with people running, seemingly in every direction. The phone had captured cries and shouts. Karen wondered who would pause to start recording in such a moment, but then there was always someone.

Briefly, she set the bowl down to add a splash more milk, then picked it up again. In her head, she ran through whether anyone she knew would be on that train at that time. She didn’t think so. It made her shudder, nonetheless. The coverage went back to the studio now, where someone had taken the best of the amateur camera shots and turned them into slick backgrounds to head up the various aspects of the report. As the presenter commented on ‘The Emergency Response’, there was a picture of an ambulance crew arriving, one paramedic frozen in mid-air, jumping from the vehicle in his rush to get to the scene. The next segment was ‘The Injured’ and a different picture flashed up. This one showed a woman leaving the station building, a white burn mask covering her face and another paramedic guiding her by the shoulder. Karen took a sharp intake of breath at the scene; the bomb might have done less damage than those responsible had hoped for, but it didn’t look great for that poor soul.

As the presenter continued to talk, striving to eke out a paucity of information into something that was meant to sound meaningful and authoritative, Karen squinted at the screen. There was someone else in the picture, just behind the woman in the burn mask. At first glance, this other figure, darkly clothed and covered in dust, almost merged with the background, but, as soon as Karen turned her attention away from the arresting image of that mask and really looked at the rest of the picture, the second woman jolted into focus.

With a clatter, the glass mixing bowl dropped out of her hands, slopping creamy mixture down her dress and all over her suede slippers. For a long, frozen moment, Karen stared at the screen, ignoring the slow drips of batter sliding from her hem to the floor.

The other woman in the picture was Alex.

Chapter 2
Misty
2019

She’d been doing the job for twenty-two years, but the sting when they lost someone never hurt any less.

The couple sitting in front of her – knees touching, hands clasped – had strong rural accents that sounded out of place in the busy London clinic. They were from somewhere in darkest Dorset, driven here by desperation and internet research that had given them a glimmer of hope that, here, something could be done to help their precious Bella.

Over the last few months, Misty had come to like them, which wasn’t always the case. She respected Alan, with his weathered farmer’s hands and the pressed cotton handkerchief he put in his jacket pocket for trips up to town. His wife Ruth, with her wide, disarming smile and her scent of freesias, inspired a feeling of warmth that Misty knew was shared by all the staff who’d worked with Bella. Today, though, they were visiting for the last time.

‘I never believed it would come to this.’ Ruth sniffed, and Alan squeezed her hand where it lay in his. ‘I knew it in my head, but I never believed it in my heart.’

Misty nodded, careful to allow the woman have the space she needed to speak.

‘She was such a live wire, you know, when she was a little one. I wish you could have known her. These last few years, it’s been like a flame going out. Maybe she was just too bright for us … too bright for this world. She just faded away, and there was nothing we could do to keep here … nothing … nothing we could do.’

The short speech subsided into sobs and she leant into her husband’s embrace, knocking awkwardly against the small cardboard box of Bella’s things they’d already collected from the ward staff. Misty fought back a lump rising in her own throat.

People quite often talked of it in that way, their daughters fading away. It sounded quiet, almost holy, echoing the legacy of those wretched Italian heroines who starved themselves to sainthood in the Middle Ages. But Misty knew only too well that the fading was only a part of the story. Even as her patients’ bodies diminished, so the presence of their disease grew – it entrenched itself in families, sucking up everything they had to give and more. Daily routines would turn into battlegrounds, education and prospects would be devastated, siblings would be left confused and neglected, marriages would founder. Anorexia was a tyrant. And, in the case of Bella Durnton, a killer.

After today, she wouldn’t see Alan or Ruth again. They had declined, with their usual dignity, the clinic’s offer to send staff to the funeral. Lyme Regis was too far, they said, it wasn’t right to keep the staff from their work, far less to encroach on their time off. Misty knew that the funerals were often lavish and well attended, the privilege of those who die young.

What would come after that for Ruth and Alan? They had the farm – two hundred head of rare-breed cattle, as Alan had told her proudly when they first met two years earlier, and also the farm dogs that slept in the kitchen though they should be outside. Both were from families long established in the area. There were plenty of relatives scattered around, but no other children. Misty imagined Ruth doing flowers for the church and spoiling nieces and nephews. She wasn’t the sort to let her tragedy define her, but, as Misty knew only too well, it would always be there. Would they blame her? She’d probably never know.

*

By the time the Durntons left for cardboard coffee at Waterloo and a lonely journey on the crowded train home, her afternoon ward round was still waiting for her and she had at least four emails to reply to that wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. It was nearly 8 p.m. when she finally said her goodbyes to the night sister, collected her things, and made her way outside.

The chill evening air bit at her cheeks. It was February, the time of year when winter has long lost its glamour and spring seems little more than a fairy story. There had been an attempted terror attack earlier in the day – she’d caught bits and pieces of it on the news and on her phone through the day. A man with a homemade bomb in a plastic paint container tried to blow up a tube train on the Northern Line. No fatalities, thank God. There had been sporadic alerts and closures on the tube, which wouldn’t affect her directly but meant the bus would probably be even busier than usual. She hoped the Durntons had got to Waterloo without disruption; they didn’t need travel chaos to deal with on top of everything else they’d been through today.

There was a crowd at the bus stop and she decided to walk, at least the first part. The streets seemed to have a skittish, febrile atmosphere as they always did on such days. But then, perhaps it was nothing more than her imagination, filling in what she expected to see. In the waiting room of the clinic, she’d noticed more people watching the twenty-four-hour news channel on the overhead TV than on a normal Tuesday afternoon. The screen showed familiar faces intoning sombre thoughts in front of police cordons and rolled shaky mobile phone footage of smoke and dust and a small crowd rushing from the doors at East Finchley. It was the parents in the waiting room, mainly, looking at the screen. The kids beside them were locked into their phones, so not everything was different.

She strode briskly, shoving her bare hands deep into her pockets, and the bite of the cold weather receded a little. They’d had a mild spell, but it was definitely back to gloves for tomorrow. Still, it was nice to be outside. The air in the hospital always felt stale. She worried that it clung to her – that she had a hospital smell that other people could detect, like some people smelt of their dogs. London air was never fresh but, in the cold, you could at least imagine it might be. It would be more pleasant to walk than get the bus, she decided. It might take forty minutes but it wasn’t as if she was rushing home for anyone.

She lived in Kennington, in a street of rather twee Victorian terraced cottages, which did their best to ignore the roar of the traffic and the ugly jumble of the city that had grown up around them. It was pleasant and convenient and still more affordable than similar spots north of the river. The street housed young professionals and gay couples and a few older residents. The sort of people who bought these houses moved further out if they had children.

Except for the scattering of junk mail by the front door, everything in the house was as she had left it that morning. Eusebio was on an assignment and wouldn’t be back for a week or two. There were some leftovers from a pasta she’d done last night. That would do, with a bit of chopped-up tomato and cucumber she could call a salad. She didn’t like to open wine on a weeknight, but the conversation with the Durntons had taken its toll, so maybe tonight would be an exception.

An hour later she was sipping a pinot in front of a rolling news channel, the debris of her meal still littering her coffee table. It was all about the bombing, of course. There was a still photo of woman in a burn mask leaving the scene. Misty leant forward and squinted at the screen. They’d been using the image a lot, but this time, without her food to distract her, something else caught her eye. That woman in the background.

‘Alex?’

The word escaped her lips even though there was no one to hear it. It was the first time she’d spoken that name aloud in years.

Her mind flashed back, suddenly flooded with images of glossy black curls, champagne, rebellion, extravagance and that million-dollar smile. Alex was the reason she was doing this job, the reason she was living this life. Every time she helped someone recover, it was a temporary salve on the unhealable wound that was Alex Penrith. Every time she lost a girl like Bella Durnton, it was like losing Alex all over again.

The woman fleeing the attack – the dust and filth-covered woman with her determined eyes, frozen in an instant as the backdrop to a horror story – was an uncanny fit with Misty’s images of Alex fast-forwarded through three decades. This woman was older than the Alex she remembered – although the grime and dust that flattened her features made it impossible to tell how old. She shared Alex’s distinctive curly hair, her elfin features and something about the way she held herself. The essence of Alex sang out from the screen. But despite the likeness, it couldn’t be her.

Because Alex had been dead for almost thirty years.

Chapter 3
Misty
1987

Misty blinked and blinked again. She’d waited for this moment for two years, perhaps for her whole life. After pouring so much energy into hoping and fantasising and anticipating she was finally here. In her tiny bedroom at home, or out walking through the scrubby fields with Mack, her dog, there had been no space in her imaginings for even the slightest whisper of doubt. Only now, sitting on a narrow lumpy bed, next to the suitcase and two cardboard boxes that contained her possessions, did the doubt start to creep in.

Her mum, Elspeth, had driven her down in their battered Mini Metro; she didn’t like to drive that sort of distance but Misty’s dad couldn’t get time off to come with them. They’d sucked Polos and alternated Ray Stevens and The Cure in the cassette player because the radio picked up nothing but static. Normally, she felt her irritation with her mum’s jangly American country tapes was entirely justified. After all, she had Johnny Mathis to thank for her name, which had caused enough bother through high school. If there were any other girls christened Misty in Rochdale in 1968, she’d yet to meet one. Today, though, even the music couldn’t spoil her good mood. Elspeth was in high spirits too – it felt like a holiday.

As they got closer to Cambridge, though, Elspeth’s chatter had died away. Perhaps she was concentrating on the unfamiliar roads but Misty sensed it was more than that. Her mother, the most down-to-earth, suffer-no-fools person she knew, was daunted. Was it just that Misty was flying the nest? That tonight Elspeth would drive back by herself to a house from which her eldest child was missing? Or was it just the thought of Cambridge and everything that came with it?

Misty was excited, not daunted. When they arrived, she was the one who announced herself to the porters and collected her room key, whilst her mum waited in the car, fretting about a parking ticket and who knew what else. With a temporary college permit in the windscreen, Elspeth agreed to come inside for just long enough to see Misty’s room and have a cup of tea. They’d picked up some supplies at a petrol station on the A14: milk, bread, teabags, a tub of margarine and two tins of ham. Misty put the kettle on and opened the cupboards. One had some breakfast cereal and a bottle of red wine in it but the others were empty. There was one carton of milk in the fridge. So, either Misty was the second to arrive, or else the others were even more cavalier about sustenance than Miss Muesli and herself.

She had the two mugs of tea in her hands when the kitchen door swung open towards her.

‘Oh. Hello. I thought I heard someone else. I’ve been waiting all day. I’m Alexandra Penrith.’

The girl was half a head taller than Misty, slim, with lustrous dark curls and the poshest accent Misty had ever heard. She stuck out her hand in a rather formal way, but her smile was broad and genuine.

Misty shrugged, glancing down at the mugs she was holding and they both giggled. Alexandra dropped her hand and turned to hold the door open instead.

‘I’m Misty Jardine. My mum’s just leaving,’ said Misty. ‘I mean, once she’s had this.’ She nodded down at the tea. ‘What room number are you?’

‘Six. And you?’

‘Two.’

‘Great. Come and find me when you’re ready. I’ll be unpacking and accosting random strangers.’

You could arrive on Friday or Saturday. It turned out that only three girls from the corridor of eight were there the first night. The third looked around fourteen, whispered that she was called Emma and was studying maths and locked herself in her room. Misty and Alexandra – who said she preferred to be called Alex – chatted awkwardly in Alex’s room. She’d brought actual furniture – a desk with elaborate carving that looked Indian to Misty’s untrained eye and a pair of woven cane chairs, laden with sari-silk cushions. The bed itself looked the same as Misty’s, but it was piled with more of the jewel-coloured cushions and swathed in an intricately embroidered throw.

‘Wow, this is incredible,’ said Misty, forgetting to try to be cool.

‘Well, I just couldn’t tolerate the awful stuff here, so Daddy arranged with the porters to stash it in storage. It’s so important to be able to express yourself, isn’t it? They don’t know about the picture hooks yet –’ she gestured towards a couple of frames hanging above the bed; Misty definitely remembered there being something in the information leaflet about it being expressly forbidden to attach anything other than Blu-Tack to the wall ‘– but I’m sure I can talk them round.’

Misty thought of the two posters waiting to go up in her own room. One was Morrissey, the other a cute Labrador puppy. Both were a bit tatty having been up in her room at home. Would they count as self-expression in Alex’s book?

They missed the canteen – which Alex informed her was called the buttery – which was on reduced opening hours because it wasn’t yet officially term time.

‘Well, we could get something in town?’ suggested Alex, as they stood in a drizzly quad in front of the locked buttery door, clutching the mimeographed maps of college they had been given on arrival.

Misty had £22 in her purse. It had to last her until she sorted out a bank account and her grant came through. College food would go on a college bill that she could pay off at the end of term. She might not have got her head round the terminology but she was straight on that much. She thought of the tinned ham and loaf of bread in the cupboard. It wasn’t appealing, but she wouldn’t starve. Would Alex despise her if she suggested a ham sandwich?

‘Are you okay?’

Before she could answer, they were interrupted by a cough behind them.

‘Is the buttery closed, then?’

They turned to see another girl. Like Alex, she was wearing stonewashed jeans, pearl studs in her ears and a blazer-type jacket. Misty couldn’t decide whether to feel insecure, but settled on mildly amused.

‘I’m Karen Cooper. I just arrived today.’

‘First year?’ asked Alex, and, when Karen nodded, she added, ‘Us too. We’re just going to get something to eat, actually. There’s a nice little bistro place not far away. I don’t want to seem bossy, but my family live here, so I know my way around.’

‘Sounds good.’ Karen nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

They both turned to Misty, and she hesitated for a moment, thinking of the tinned ham and the £22. She’d have to go and see the grant office first thing tomorrow. She wasn’t about to skulk back to her room with her tail between her legs.

‘Okay,’ she agreed, ‘let’s go.’

*

The skies were threatening rain and Alex led the way purposefully. Karen, who had long legs and a graceful stride, kept up easily, but Misty found herself distracted at every turn. There was so much to look at as they hurried through streets lined with medieval colleges that looked like castles, and passed rosy pub windows and clothes shops that Misty had heard of but never seen on any high street she visited.

‘Your parents are academics then?’ Karen addressed her question to Alex, but didn’t wait for a response. ‘Didn’t you want to go away to university? Why not Oxford?’

Misty’s ears pricked. Getting away had been her dream for as long as she could remember, but then she’d never really thought about people who lived in places like this already – who didn’t need to escape to them.

Side-on, in the street light, she could see that Alex made a face, but wasn’t sure exactly what her expression meant.

‘It’s a bit complicated,’ she said, eventually. ‘My mum would say I need looking after. I would say she does.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘You two have waved your parents on their merry way, haven’t you? I’d swap places with either of you if I could.’

Misty felt taken aback, as if Alex could read her mind. Only a moment ago she’d been thinking about how Alex’s life seemed impossibly charmed. But it didn’t appear that Alex felt that way.

‘We’re here anyway,’ Alex announced. ‘Not the best restaurant in Cambridge. But one of the closest. And just in time.’ She stuck her hand out, and, sure enough, there were fat raindrops starting to plop from the sky. They hurried through the doorway.

Once they were seated at a generous table by the window, a waiter brought menus and Alex announced, ‘We’ll have a bottle of house champagne.’ Panicked, Misty gave a small cough. Splashing out on a ‘cheap’ meal was one thing; this she hadn’t bargained for.

‘Please don’t worry, darlings.’ Alex lowered her voice. ‘My dad’s always in here; he’s got an account. This is my treat – or should I say his.’ There was a giggle and a glint in her eye, as if they were all up to mischief together.

That was the thing about Alex, as Misty would quickly come to learn. Although the way she acted and the things she said should have felt objectionable, or condescending – should have been, in fact, everything that Misty would have expected to despise – they somehow weren’t. Alex had a wonderful warmth, a gift of drawing people in, of making them see the world from her perspective. Misty would soon discover that the world, from that vantage point was a much more colourful and exciting place than she’d previously imagined.

Chapter 4
Tasha
2019

Tasha knew that whoever invented Valentine’s Day must have been a wanker. A sadistic wanker with a hatred of teenagers. It comes at the worst time of the year. When Christmas is over, but it still won’t be warm for ages and the teachers are doling out crap results from crap mock GCSEs. It creeps up on you – you’d forget it was coming and then you’d be in town and see a card shop window stuffed with red heart-shaped balloons and your stomach would jump up and crash down again leaving you feeling queasy.

Tasha estimated that around two per cent of the girls in school actually liked Valentine’s Day. They were the fit ones with boyfriends, or at least boys who would admit to liking them. If it wasn’t for them, everyone else could just ignore it and forget about the whole thing. But they wouldn’t let that happen. Girls like Lola Shirini and Nadya Bansal. They’d been going on about it for ages. The main WhatsApp group for the girls in Tasha’s year was full of messages from them debating which boys were going to get them cards or presents and who else wasn’t going to get anything.

Her friends Claire and Sonal felt exactly the same. The three of them were moaning about it at lunchtime, eating their packed lunches in the music quad. It was freezing, but still better than eating inside and contending with a zoo of screaming Year 7s and 8s and their stinky sandwiches. Sonal was in a bad mood to start with because she’d got a Grade 7 in her history mock. She was expecting an 8 and Tash knew she was hoping for a 9 in the real one, even though she wouldn’t admit it. Tash had got an 8 so Sonal was being a bit pissy with her, even though Tash’s actual mark was only three higher than Sonal’s own.

Claire didn’t do History and didn’t get any marks back that day so she was keeping quiet, but then Claire was a real-life genius anyway and Tash just knew she was going to get a 9 in everything without even trying. Mr Taylor had already told her he thought she’d have a good shot at Oxford or Cambridge. Claire had been on at Tasha’s mum to give her a practice interview, because she’d been to Cambridge herself. She apparently hadn’t paused to think that it did a fat lot of good for Karen. But then perhaps geniuses weren’t renowned for common sense.

Sonal was going on and on about Charles de Gaulle and how she’d been unfairly marked down because she’d forgotten when he died. Then Claire told her to shut up and said that when Sonal and Tash had been in History, she’d been in Geography and Lola had been nudging loads of the girls and getting them to look at something ‘secret’ in her bag. When the bag got passed to Claire, she saw a box of Lindt chocolates and a charm bracelet in a Pandora box. No wonder Lola was pleased with herself. Everyone knew that Pandora bracelets started at £100 or something and apparently this had three or four charms on it already.

After Sonal had whinged about her exam and Claire had told the others about Lola’s bracelet, a Year 7 kid came up out of nowhere and said, ‘Are you Tasha Neville?’ She obviously didn’t have a clue which one of them actually was Tasha, because she was talking more to Claire when she said it. So, Tasha butted in to say she was the girl was they were looking for and the Year 7 shoved this giant pink envelope at her and then ran off sniggering like a fruit loop.

‘Well, open it then!’ Claire and Sonal were all over her. So, she did, and it was a Valentine’s card. It had a pair of those hideous grey teddies that are meant to be cute with massive hearts between them and part of her head was thinking about how it was possibly the worst card that had ever been printed and how she’d be embarrassed to buy it. But at the same time another part of her mind was thinking that this was the first Valentine’s card she’d ever got. Claire and Sonal were obviously mad with jealousy and, after all, it wasn’t like anyone would expect a boy to have good taste in greetings cards so they all decided they could probably overlook the bleurgh grey teddies. For Tash, the amazing thing was that someone actually liked her and wanted to tell her that on Valentine’s Day with a big showy card at school.

She flicked the card open then shut it immediately. But not quick enough to stop the rush of blood in her cheeks. There had been some printed writing – she’d not had the card open for long enough to read it – then, at the bottom, just one word ‘Stanno’ and one crossed kiss.

Tasha had fancied him since Year 8. Thinking about it, she probably would have had more chance with him then, because ever since then he’d just got more fit and more popular whereas she’d, well, not. But they did still get on. He only lived a street away from her and sometimes they would walk home together off the bus. Maybe she’d made more of an impression than she’d thought.

‘Oh my God.’ She turned to her friends. ‘It’s Dylan Stanton. It’s actually him. He likes me. OM-fucking-G. What the fuck am I going to do?’

And the girls were hyped, because they knew she liked Stanno, although she would never have told them quite how much. Claire’s face lit with excitement and happiness for her, and then, just as suddenly, it crumpled.

Tash’s stomach turned to ice. She turned, following Claire’s gaze, to look over her shoulder. Lola Shirini swooped like a vampire bat, her glossy Kate Middleton hair swinging and her phone thrusting into Tash’s face as her laughter ripped through the quad.

‘She actually fell for it. Look at her! Little Miss Boffin-Head is in luurve with Dylan Stanton. Can you imagine it? Like he’d send a card to her – as if!’

The three or four worker bees she’d brought along for the ride swayed around laughing, making out like they were pissing themselves or unable to stay upright. The blood that had rushed to Tash’s cheeks a few moments earlier was now joined by what felt like the rest of the blood in her entire body and an army of fire ants. Her face was blazing like an exploding oil tanker.

She stood up and shoved the card into Lola’s free hand.

‘Take it back then – it’s not like I care.’ She choked out the last couple of words in a sob, aware even as she said it that it was a pretty pathetic effort at a comeback.

Of course, when she was stewing at home that evening, she came up with about seventeen razor-sharp ripostes that would have left Lola for dead. But none of those were featured on the video that was instantly being shared all over WhatsApp and Snapchat. Tasha knew that even kids in other years who wouldn’t have had a clue who she was that morning would be pointing and laughing when she went back into school the next day.

She wondered if it was true that Saint Valentine lived in Italy a zillion years ago and they made him a saint because he married couples so the husbands wouldn’t have to go to war. Woot woot for them. She would bet he didn’t realise the depths of misery he was storing up for generations of innocent schoolgirls, did he? Wanker.

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