Her finger hovered above the Send button. For years afterwards, even when she was a grown woman with a job and a flat and a boyfriend of her own, Izzie would remember with a choking nausea that moment of hesitation when the future held its breath and waited for her choice. But a weird sort of momentum had taken hold of her and she felt powerless to stop it. Send, she decided, pressing the screen.

There followed a few seconds’ silence, as if her friends were collectively gasping and reading the message again to check they weren’t hallucinating – and then in poured the responses like an avalanche:

Ruby – NOOOOOO. WHAT?????

Tej – are you serious?

Izzie – hell, yeah

Lily – OMG

Alice – WHOA

Ruby – you broke the frickin leaderboard!!!

Miko – what was it like?? This is George the sexy older man, right?

Izzie – yep. Fucking amazing!

Tej – tell us everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!

Izzie let go of her phone and fell back on her bed, her heart pounding as if she’d been running hard and fast. How do you like me now, girls? Is that wild enough for you?

Sweat popped out on her forehead, both from the stuffiness of the room and the acid guilt curdling her stomach. She felt as if she was either about to throw up or collapse in hysterical laughter. Lying so outrageously felt exhilarating and kind of crazy too. She loved thinking of their shocked faces, trying to comprehend what she’d done. What she hadn’t done, more like, but they didn’t need to know that. If her friends called her bluff, she’d just laugh and express incredulity that they’d believed her at all. You really fell for it? You really thought I would? Thanks a lot, guys. Unbelievable!

She heard the door close in the room next to hers and then George’s footsteps on the landing. ‘Seren?’ he yelled. ‘Seren, where are you?’

Izzie’s phone was still chiming and buzzing with new messages and questions, but she typed Got to go and then muted her notifications, not wanting to get entangled with elaborations. She’d tell them later that it was all a joke. Probably anyway. For now, though, the lie felt like a small, private strike back. A tiny victory that George didn’t even know about. ‘I win,’ she said under her breath.

‘What, so she lied? An out-and-out lie? Are you serious?’ Em couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had eventually come in from the pool with vague thoughts about being hungry, only to see that it was almost five o’clock and she was shrivelled up like a prune. Then, as she towelled herself dry in the bedroom after a quick shower, George had come in to find her, stormy-faced.