‘Because it is personal!’ he said, almost shouting now. ‘We both know they aren’t worried about you not being good enough for me! This isn’t a schoolkid crush, Bea. I love you and I want to be with you forever and I want the whole world to know about it. It kills me that you don’t feel the same way.’ His voice dropped. ‘I want you to be proud of me.’

The pressure of those words made it impossible to breathe or think straight.

‘I can’t tell them yet. Don’t ask me to, please, Adam. A year and a half and we’ll have left school. I’ll tell them then.’

‘A year and a half?’ He screwed up his face.

‘It’s not that long if we’re going to be together forever.’

‘Easier to say when you’re not the one made to feel like crap.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, reaching for his hand.

‘Yeah.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s getting late. You’d best go.’

‘I… don’t have to?’ I said, clutching his hand tighter. ‘I could stay, and we could just…’

‘I don’t think so. We don’t want to risk your parents finding out.’

Thanks to my heart feeling as though it had been smashed into pieces, and the lanes being iced over like a toboggan run causing me to crash into a ditch, it took me forever to get back to the party. The entire place was in darkness, and when I crept up to the front door, it was locked. After tramping around the back doors and the summer house, I decided to try the garage. I knew that Henry’s dad had a workshop above it, which would hopefully be warmer than outside. I ventured over to a set of metal steps, my stiff, bruised limbs struggling to climb up to the workshop door, tears of misery freezing on my face.

To my enormous relief, it was unlocked, and made only the faintest creak as I pushed it open and slipped inside.

‘Halt!’ A hoarse cry stopped me in my tracks.

Three seconds and the sound of a water glass being knocked over later, a torch switched on, aimed right at my face so I couldn’t see who was behind it.

I had a good idea, though. Halt?

There was the sound of a throat being cleared. ‘The light switch is left of the door.’

The torch beam shifted to a spot on the wall, and I quickly turned on the light, which wasn’t much brighter than the torch but at least the dim glow was now spread across the room, rather than concentrated on me.