A friend of Jamie’s? I wasn’t so sure. I felt really guilty. Jamie had been nothing other than nice to me since I’d met him and here I was with his mum trying to soothe my hangover after I’d not really even given him the time of day.

‘Where is Jamie?’

‘He’s a teenage boy, he’ll sleep-in for as long as I let him.’

I don’t know if it was my guilt or the after effects of alcohol in my system, but I blurted out, ‘I always thought that Dad and Mum split up because of Dad’s girlfriend. Now I think it was because of Mum all along.’

‘What do you mean?’

I wondered if I should tell Lydia the truth about Mum. As I looked at her face, her dark shoulder-length hair and dark green eyes, something told me it was okay.

‘My mum is always drinking,’ I confessed. ‘Like, always.’

Lydia sipped her tea. ‘Every day?’

‘Most days, especially when I need her not to.’

‘Like on special occasions?’

‘Especially on special occasions.’

‘She doesn’t show up? And then makes a whole lot of excuses and apologies and blames it on everything and everyone else?’

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding and wondering how Lydia knew this stuff about my mum so well. ‘You don’t know my mum, do you?’ I checked.

‘No,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Unfortunately I know a lot of people like her.’

‘Last night, it was kind of like an experiment.’

‘What was?’ Lydia seemed confused.

‘Getting drunk. I mean, I didn’t want to get drunk and spew and end up here and all of that, but I wanted to know what getting drunk felt like.’

Lydia fidgeted in her seat, momentarily looking pretty much through me. ‘And how do you feel about your experiment?’

‘I liked it when I first felt the sensation, the warming inside of me. I started to feel floaty and confident, and I forgot about the bad things for a while. But then—’ I paused and shuddered. ‘Everything turned sour.’

‘Yes, I saw that part of it,’ Lydia said with stern kindness.

I thought about what she didn’t see. I hoped Jamie hadn’t told her what Trent tried to do – what he did.

‘So what do you want to do?’ she asked and I thought, I want to kick him in the nuts and tell everyone I know not to go near him.

Then I realised she was asking about something else. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you want me to drop you home?’ she asked, her shoulders rising.

‘No,’ I almost screamed and luckily said without spluttering. ‘Can I just sit here for a while and think?’

‘Sure. Do you want some breakfast too? It’ll help.’

I nodded, and thought about my things that were at Caroline’s. I needed to go back and get them.