‘No. Please. I don’t want to.’

A short pause and then all the animation that had taken hold of Corinne drained away.

‘Fine,’ she said, putting down the scissors and throwing herself on to the couch, lapsing into sullen silence.

‘It’s just that I—’

‘No. I understand.’ She turned her face away.

Whenever this happened – her sharp withdrawal – it made Beth think of a light suddenly switched off. A room bathed in warm sunshine sharply plunged into darkness. These moments left her feeling bereft and a little panicked, scrambling for ways to reverse her friend’s mood. When she had Corinne’s attention, she felt warm and whole and understood. But with the attention snatched away, she became once again the old Beth she despised – stupid, worthless, hardly there at all. She didn’t deserve Corinne’s friendship, that’s what she thought. Corinne was only trying to help her by compelling her to be fearless and daring, as Corinne herself was. What was she so afraid of?

She’d picked up the scissors, and standing in front of Corinne, had snatched a handful of her dull, frizzy hair and sheared it straight off.

‘There,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s only hair after all.’

It had been worth it. For the delight in Corinne’s reaction alone. It had been worth it.

She had given herself over to Corinne’s fussing, nervily surrendering control. Corinne had snipped and washed and dyed, butterfly fingers flitting over Beth’s hair, and when she was finished, Beth was unrecognizable to herself. She looked at the pale triangle of her face, alarming in its new nakedness, the greased blond locks like a corona of lemon peels above her forehead, and felt an inner trembling. But whatever doubts she held were waved aside by Corinne’s bright assertions, her coos of rapture. Somehow, her good opinion carried more weight than the heft of Beth’s own insecurities – it was more prized because it had to be earned. It was not until Beth saw Eva’s appalled expression, and the alarm in her mother’s face, that the full volume of her insecurity came screeching to life within her head. For one horrible moment, she was sure Abi was going to cry.

All throughout the evening, while the seven of them ate on the terrace, she kept catching her mother sneaking little glances at her, glances suffused with dismay. Through the stilted politeness of the meal, Beth could tell her mother was impatient to get her on her own and she knew what that would mean. When it was airily remarked upon that Beth would continue to share Corinne’s room for the duration of the holiday, she’d seen her mother’s mouth tighten, her lips thinning with fury.

‘Maybe we should tell them,’ Beth suggested now, and this caused Corinne to sit up suddenly.

‘Are you crazy?’