‘Please tell me before I piss you off,’ Hayley joked.

‘Look, I’ve been having a hard time, and Matilda was the final straw,’ I explained. ‘I think we’ve sorted things out now.’

‘Let’s hope she’s learned her lesson,’ Caroline said, pulling me back to focus on what we were about to do. She looked at me as if to say, It’s okay, we’ve got this.

We waved to the others as we stepped onto the bus. A short time later, we stepped off near the old pub and walked towards hipster’s corner.

‘Are you good?’ I asked, feeling adrenaline shoot through my body.

‘Yeah, I’m good. You good?’ Caroline responded and I nodded.

When we were at the cafe and I saw Trent’s mum serving someone, and all of the people drinking coffee and eating their gluten-free cakes and things, I realised that Caroline and I hadn’t sorted out a game plan.

‘What do we do?’ I asked her.

‘We walk right up and say we want to speak with her,’ she said, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me along beside her.

When we got to the counter, Trent’s mum flashed us a really nice smile. ‘Nice to see you, Caroline. What can I get you girls?’

Caroline froze and for a second I thought she was going to bail and maybe order a coffee or something. So I said, ‘We’re hoping to talk with you, alone.’

‘I’m sorry, but if you’re after work, we’re still catching up after the big Covid lockdowns,’ Trent’s mum said.

‘No, it’s not that,’ Caroline replied, ‘we need to speak with you about something important.’

Maybe it’s because we had turned green or something, but Trent’s mum could see that there was something wrong. She said, ‘Come with me,’ and led us towards a room off of the main shop.

When we entered, Trent was there getting a box down off of a shelf. I swear I could have died, and then Caroline said, ‘We want to speak to your mum about a school project.’

‘Can you serve, Trent?’ his mum asked, and he left, looking like he suspected nothing, as easy as that.

Then Trent’s mum said, ‘You don’t want to speak with me about a school project, do you? What is it? Is Trent using drugs or something?’

I looked at Caroline, thinking, Trent is dealing drugs, but I didn’t know if Caroline was prepared to tell her that.

‘Mrs McLean—’ Caroline started.

‘Call me Naomi.’

‘Naomi,’ Caroline continued, ‘we’ve both really liked Trent and there’s a lot of good things about him, but he’s done some very uncool stuff. We felt we needed to tell you so that you can talk to him so he won’t do it again.’

Naomi sat down and I could tell that she was already stunned.