Then the clouds above them broke and the rain started to pour.

Izzie cycled up the hill, thighs burning from the effort, as the rain hammered down. She could hear her phone ringing somewhere in her bag behind her and hoped it would be Fraser. Telling her he missed her! Telling her he couldn’t wait to see her again! They had swapped numbers and arranged to meet up that very evening. ‘I can borrow my brother’s car and pick you up tonight,’ he’d said. ‘If you like.’

She did like. She really liked. In fact she felt positively giddy at the prospect of being in the small, enclosed space of a car with him later on. None of her friends had boyfriends with cars! It felt so grown-up and exciting. Plus it totally counted as a date, right?

They’d had such a nice time that afternoon. He’d bought her a Coke and they’d sat on a big rock together, talking and making each other laugh. Funnily enough, Swanpool turned out to be the same beach where she’d nearly been run over by that woman Olivia the other day, but Izzie felt like a different girl from the angry, stressed-out person she’d been back then, seething about the bust-up with Seren. Sitting next to Fraser in her nicest top and shorts, with her hair all bouncy and still smelling of shampoo, she felt as if her heart might combust with how good this felt, how happy she was. He was seventeen and working for his uncle’s courier business over the summer; he liked the same music as her and wanted to study veterinary science at uni. Good-looking and clever and funny . . . Fraser was perfect. Everything was perfect!

‘I bet you’ve got loads of boyfriends back home, haven’t you?’ he’d asked and she’d blushed at how wrong he was.

‘No,’ she laughed, feeling awkward. Hardly. ‘How about you?’ For all she knew, he did this every week with another holidaying girl. Surely he had them queuing round the block!

‘What, have I got loads of boyfriends?’ he teased. ‘Nah.’ He grinned at her. ‘Or girlfriends, for that matter. I haven’t met the right girl.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

He put his hand up to his eyes and pretended to peer out at the horizon. ‘Yeah. Hope she turns up soon,’ he sighed.

She whacked him and he held onto her arm and then they were play-fighting and laughing, until all of a sudden he was looking at her with soft eyes, and the fighting ground to a heart-bursting halt. ‘Ah, here she is,’ he said to her and she held her breath, both of them just gazing at each other for a long, charged second.

Her blood raced around her. Was he going to . . . ? Should she . . . ?