‘You don’t look stupid! You look cool. You just need to be a bit more brave, yes?’

There was a gaiety to Corinne’s tone, but an insistence too.

‘I’m not like you,’ Abi heard Beth say. ‘I can’t carry it off like you can.’

‘Remember the rules. You cannot question – you must just obey, right?’

Abi opened the door.

‘Everything okay?’ she asked, looking from one girl to the other.

Beth, she saw, was wearing a purple vest with a black gypsy skirt. The outfit, Abi observed with a pang of tender feeling, made Beth look lumpen and ungainly. It emphasized her curved shoulders, and the shapelessness of her waist and hips. Next to her, Corinne looked fresh and casual in a clean white T-shirt, dark skinny jeans. A swift expression of shame crossed Beth’s face as she met Abi’s gaze, disappearing just as quickly as she looked away shyly.

‘Everything all right in here?’ Abi asked again and Corinne perked up, rousing herself from whatever stand-off they’d been having.

‘Sure! We were just talking.’

She flashed her bright, sunny smile, but Abi was not convinced. Turning her attention to Beth, she began tentatively: ‘You look nice. Are you two going out somewhere?’

‘No, why?’

Abi’s eyes flickered over Beth’s clothes. ‘I just thought—’

‘Can’t I just dress for myself? Why do you assume it’s for someone else?’

Beth’s cheeks flared with colour, and Abi felt her daughter’s discomfort.

‘There’s been some chatter on the parents WhatsApp group about an outing to the Epic Museum this afternoon. It looks like most of the girls in your class are going, and I was just wondering if you two might be interested.’

‘You want us out of the way so we don’t interrupt your little lunch party, is it?’

‘Not at all! But I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in a boring lunch with your parents and the next-door neighbours.’

‘Well, if the alternative is hanging out with all those bitches from school—’

‘Watch your language, young lady.’

Calmly, Beth brought her eyes up to meet Abi’s, coolly finishing her sentence: ‘—then I’d rather swallow razor blades. If that’s what you’re serving.’

Abi flinched. It was the mention of razor blades that did it. Instantly, her mind bolted to that phone call from the school a year ago, Helen Bracken’s voice at the end of the line, formal and calm but with a sharp note of tension at the back of it, telling Abi that she needed to come to the school at once, that something serious had happened.

A whole year had passed, and she was still unnerved by the memory.

‘Come on, love,’ Abi pressed gently. ‘If you don’t make an effort, how on earth do you expect to have any friends?’