She clapped one hand to her mouth, eyes wider, laughing with embarrassment. ‘Golly, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it really. I think you’re nice.’

‘That’s all right.’ For the first time I smiled at her. She wasn’t really a bit stuck up, not the way I’d imagined. ‘Anyway, it’s not true – that I get away with it, I mean. I always seem to be in trouble with Mummy, and she thinks my brother William’s the bee’s blinking knees.’

Olivia was quiet and I realized she was only half listening to me.

‘Are you going to be sick again?’ I felt slightly less hopeful about it now.

Olivia nodded miserably. Her face had gone very pale and her forehead had broken out in a sweat. Her head lolled forward, her thin hands clutching the bowl tightly. Surprised at myself, I went over to her, put one hand on her shoulder and with the other held back some loose wisps of her hair. I could see ginger lights in it. Green liquid gushed suddenly from her mouth into the white of the bowl. She retched and I felt the force of it go through her. She gulped and panted. I fetched her a cup of water.

‘Here.’ My feelings of protectiveness took me totally by surprise.

‘Ugh.’ She wiped her mouth and sipped the water as I emptied the bowl into the old sink and rinsed it out. ‘That was horrid. Thanks though. I feel better.’

From that morning on, we were inseparable.

My life changed when I got to know her. We were besotted with each other in the way young girls can be. Both of us had been lonely and needed someone to talk to. We loved each other’s company. At home there was only William, and sometimes Angus from next door. Marjorie Mantel and Celia Oakley were pale substitutes for such a friend. I felt butterflies of excitement in my stomach at the thought of seeing Olivia. She was above all things lovable, and for that you could forgive her a great deal.

As well as being in the same class she lived less than half a mile away from us. We’d sit in her huge bedroom on Park Hill, its bay windows letting in sheets of sunlight, happy for hours, talking and laughing together. Often I don’t think we even knew why we were laughing. It was just pleasure in being together.

I loved that room. It was such a pretty, girlish place, stuffed full of things: a flowery chair on which dolls and teddies and other animals snuggled together, their glass eyes or button replacements peering out between each other’s furry limbs, a grand doll’s house on a table, her shelf stuffed with books and her cupboard and drawers full of pretty, feminine clothes. We weren’t allowed pets at home, but they even let Olivia keep her two budgerigars in her room, and they flapped around and rang their little bell in a cage near the window.