Georgia stood behind Larry and Alice as they stared with a mixture of hilarity and revulsion at the writhing naked limbs on the screen of Larry’s MacBook, a half-eaten hash brownie in her hand. Alice’s dad and stepmum were out but Alice kept looking nervously at the door, flinching whenever she heard a noise in the house, in case they came back early. They’d all seen the video loads of times before, but Larry’s final edit perfectly captured the grossness and ignominy of the whole performance.

‘Oh my god, he’s got a huge zit, on his arse,’ said Alice, clapping her palm over her mouth in horror.

Larry tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you think anyone will be able to recognize him?’

‘What – from the arse zit?’ Alice giggled. ‘Nah. Those bags on their heads work a treat. In fact, they should wear them all the time, they’re so ugly.’

‘Don’t be so mean,’ Georgia said, although she knew she was usually the first to make rude personal comments about people in school.

Alice raised an eyebrow at her in acknowledgement of this fact. ‘Er – pot . . . kettle?’ she said. ‘What’s up with you today, George? You’ve been in a right strop since you got here.’

‘Nothing,’ Georgia said sulkily. Her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans, a reminder of the reason for her panicked state. That would be Jerome’s fifth text in the last hour. She sat back down on Alice’s bed, waited until Larry and Alice were tinkering around with their video, then slipped out the phone to have a look, bracing herself as she opened the text.

COME ON BITCH, DON’T THINK YOU CAN TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE. AND DON’T IGNORE ME OR YOU’LL REGRET IT. I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.

Tears leaped into her eyes.

Georgia was used to feeling in control. She’d never before been in a situation that she couldn’t either charm or buy – with her parents’ money, of course – her way out of. Why oh why were her bloody mum and dad being so unmoveable about her allowance? She’d thought they were joking when they said that unless she got at least four Cs in her mocks, they were stopping her allowance and freezing her savings account until she was twenty-one. And now, the one time in her life when she really, really, really needed money, urgently, she had none. And she could hardly go to them and say ‘Mummy, Daddy, I need four grand to pay off a violent drug dealer that I’ve upset by losing the weed I was meant to be selling for him, and he’s going to actually kill me unless I come up with the dosh in the next couple of days . . .’