‘This summer,’ Lily had said, shortly after their last exam, when a group of them had been lying in the park passing around cans of raspberry cider, ‘we should all pledge to be wild. To say yes to everything!’

Perhaps it was the sweet intensity of freedom from school and GCSEs, perhaps it was the lukewarm fruity cider they were sharing, but everyone, Izzie included, had seized upon the suggestion. Yeah! This would be the summer when they lived life to the full and grabbed every opportunity with both hands. They were sixteen and ripe for adventures of whatever kind.

Since then, a leaderboard had started running on their group chat, with points being allocated for various daring acts of behaviour:

Ruby had scored ten points for dirty dancing with the boy she fancied at a house party, then another fifteen for kissing him, tongues and everything.

Tej had scored ten points for nicking a bottle of vodka from the corner shop and then another ten for gatecrashing a sixth former’s party in her street.

Miko had chatted up a hot boy at the Sandford Park Lido the other day (ten points) and apparently flashed him her boobs behind the changing-room door (fifteen).

Lily had bagged herself twenty points for some naked snogging – ‘heavy petting’, she called it coyly – with her boyfriend Jordan and looked set to earn quite a lot more, having wangled the two of them tickets for a music festival in August. How many points do I get for sharing a tent with Jordan? she’d asked the others.

Depends what else you’re sharing . . . Ruby had replied, with a load of winking emojis.

Izzie, meanwhile, was yet to register a single point. Clearly she was hopeless at being as cool as her friends. She felt squeamish whenever they talked about sex or boys and never knew what to say. The smell of cigarettes grossed her out, and she privately thought alcohol was disgusting. Being on holiday in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly going to help her score either, not least because Seren kept barging into her room all the time and was a total snitch; it would be impossible to get away with anything, let alone go as wild as her friends. Izzie didn’t wash her hands, Seren had reported last night at dinner. Izzie was on her phone really late last night, she had said at breakfast, presumably having been creeping about spying, like the annoying weirdo she was. Izzie won’t let me join in, she had moaned earlier, when Izzie was having a conversation with George and ignoring all Seren’s attention-seeking interruptions. Yeah, no shit, Izzie had thought, rolling her eyes.