‘But I’ve booked the tickets!’ Biting back her panic, she whined: ‘Come on, you can talk to her later. Please. She’s just being dramatic to get some attention.’

‘You go. Give my ticket to someone else.’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know. Call someone. One of your friends.’

‘I don’t have any friends. Not any more.’

‘That is not my problem.’

Corinne turned away as if she was weary, and Beth felt in that moment what a burden she had become to Corinne, a burden her friend no longer wished to carry.

‘Is this because of Bruno?’ Beth blurted out. ‘Because I wouldn’t sleep with him like you asked?’

‘It doesn’t matter why—’

‘I’m sorry. I should have done it. I wish I had now. Don’t hate me. I was just afraid … Stupid …’ Her tears had started again, and she saw the brief flash of irritation crossing Corinne’s face.

‘I don’t care about that now,’ Corinne told her in a voice that sounded heavy with boredom. And the realization came to Beth as she watched Corinne turning away from her for the door, that her friend had grown bored of her. Like a child that had outgrown a toy and now discarded it without a twinge of regret. She couldn’t bear for Corinne to turn from her like that.

‘Maybe I’ll call Lisa,’ Beth said quickly. ‘She’d probably be delighted to go.’ Aiming for defiance but her voice was shaking. ‘She worries about me spending too much time with you. She thinks you’re too controlling.’

Corinne paused. She had her back to Beth, but Beth thought she saw tension coming into her shoulders, her neck.

‘You were talking to her?’

‘The other day. We were paired with each other in Home Ec. You’d bunked off, remember?’

Her limbs suddenly ached, like she was coming down with something, and when she thought again of Lisa’s fingers reaching for hers through the flour in the bowl, she felt the colour rise to her cheeks.

The words hung there for a moment, a tense silence gathering around them. Then Corinne turned, and scoured the flat plain of Beth’s face.

‘Do you believe her?’

‘No. I don’t know.’ Beth’s voice wobbled, her eyes slid away.

‘I have tried with you, Beth. I have tried to make you stand up for yourself. To be brave—’

‘I am brave. Lisa thinks I am.’ The words emerging in a rush.

Corinne took them in with a look of faint amusement mingling with pity. ‘Does she.’

‘Cutting my hair, getting my tattoo – she thinks it was brave—’

‘Perhaps you didn’t tell her who it was that paid for your tattoo.’

The words snapping in the air between them, all of Corinne’s animation sharpened to a hard, narrow gaze.

‘I miss you,’ Beth whispered. ‘I miss the way you used to be with me.’