I could only hope that he didn’t notice the puddle of water I’d left outside the door or, if he did, that he wouldn’t put two and two together.

I got to have Zorro in my bed that night. It was the first time he’d slept with me.

I plumped up a pillow for him and he lay there, staring at me as I tickled him behind the ear. But after about twenty minutes he jumped off the bed and padded over to the closed door, where he sat and whined.

‘What is it, Z?’ I asked. ‘Can’t be needing a wee, because you don’t do wees, do you?’ Maybe I’d ask Mum if she could program that into him. It would make him even more realistic and I’d be happy to clean up any mistakes he might do around the house.

The dog kept whining, so eventually I got up and opened my door. He immediately trotted down the corridor and squeezed into Aiden’s bedroom. A few moments later, the door closed.

I felt like crying. And I also felt that somehow it was my own fault. The dog was learning things very quickly, and obviously Aiden had been teaching him loyalty. Not loyalty to us, but loyalty to Aiden. I found it hard to believe that he had left his bedroom door open out of carelessness. I’d been nice, letting Aiden have Z in his room all the time. Now I felt my generosity had been used against me. The trouble was, I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t get resentful at the person who’d saved my life. That would make me a total bitch. So I went back to my bedroom, picked up my book and tried to pretend I wasn’t hurting.

I’d only been thirteen a few days, but in that time, my brother was getting weird, probably because of hormones that were almost certainly heading my way, my mum was halfway round the planet, my dad was unhappy looking after us, maybe resenting us, and my dog didn’t like me. Okay, maybe he did like me, but not nearly as much as he liked Aiden. And my best friend was a know-it-all who tried to make me feel stupid. Who did make me feel stupid.

It was self-pity. I knew that. But sometimes a bit of self-pity can be just what you need. So I sobbed myself to sleep at the injustice of how the world treated Ashleigh Delatour and in the morning I felt loads better.

10

‘I’m going over the fence at lunchtime,’ said Aiden.

‘You’re doing what?’

‘I want to talk to Xena. Are you coming with me?’

‘You’re nuts, Aiden. Of course I’m not coming with you. Have you forgotten the trouble we got into last time? Get caught again and Mum and Dad’ll kill us.’

‘They won’t kill us.’

‘No, they won’t kill us. They’ll just make us wish they had. It’s crazy, Aiden. Don’t do it.’