Even before the operation, Beth had hated the idea of people looking at her, the horrible curve in her back, the solid mass of flesh around her stomach like the trunk of some thickened tree. Her curves were in the wrong places – her body an amorphous shape that she despised. In a way, she was grateful for the scar – it gave her the perfect excuse to hide herself away while others around her chose to bare all in bikinis, labouring to perfect their flawless tans.

‘Liar,’ Corinne had said, her eyes flaring with humour.

She’d been inches away from Beth, her arms gently moving through the water. The river washed around them, brackish and cool. Beth, crouched in the shallows, could feel the silt of the riverbed beneath her toes.

‘Come,’ Corinne had said, beckoning her out into deeper waters.

Corinne’s arms shone with sunlight catching the droplets on her skin. Her breath held the faint whiff of something sweet. Beneath the damp folds of Beth’s T-shirt, she had felt Corinne’s finger gently tracing the silvery white line of her scar. Distantly, she was aware of her mother on the bank, watching, always watching. But the nerve endings in her body rose to the touch. She raised her arms and allowed Corinne to peel the T-shirt off, and in that moment, it felt like shedding skin.

‘You don’t know, oh-oh, you don’t know you’re beautiful,’ Corinne sang, her rasping voice yielding to a pure, sweet tone.

Beth had wanted to stay in that moment – the gentle movement of water, Corinne’s fingertips, their legs tangling below the surface. She felt the full force of Corinne’s attention, and didn’t want the moment to ever end.

The van braked suddenly. Corinne said:

‘This is it.’

They climbed down from the van and watched it speed away.

‘Where are we?’ Eva asked, frowning as she looked around at the scrubby fields, hazy in the evening sunlight.

‘Come on, it’s this way.’

Corinne led them towards a low house with a bowed roof that sat alone among a thicket of nettles and briars. Tiles were missing in patches from the roof. It appeared derelict until a blond-coated dog limped out into the yard, her handsome features drooping and sad. Corinne bent to rub her muzzle and the dog suffered her attentions for a moment then turned and moved away, revealing a dark streak of shit running down her flank, ribs flashing beneath loose skin with every painful hop.

‘Gross,’ Eva remarked, disgusted.

‘She’s got cancer,’ Corinne declared, shrugging with indifference, before disappearing through the open doorway.

Beth and Eva hung back. Nerves announced themselves in Beth’s stomach now they were actually here. The prospect of what she was about to do gave her pause. It was too real, too immediate. From inside the house came the high-pitched yelping of a small dog.