He turned to me and held the marker pen up in the air. ‘Want to have a go?’

I hesitated. I was enjoying the laughing and I fancied him a bit, but did I want to draw on my best friend?

‘OK,’ I said. In my drunken logic – and because there wasn’t a lot of space left – I thought I’d give her a beauty spot, like Elizabeth Taylor. She was a bit of an idol of ours; Cherry had a knackered old ‘Girls World’ styling head we used to muck about on and we often used to whack an Elizabeth Taylor beauty spot on it, as a finishing touch. So, I gave Cherry a nice one on the corner of her lips, mistakenly thinking I was both appeasing the boys and improving her look.

‘What’s that?’ derided one of the boys.

‘Beauty spot,’ I defended.

‘Can’t really see it,’ he judged.

‘OK,’ I said. And I made it bigger and bigger until it was a huge witch’s wart.

In the morning Cherry went upstairs to go to the loo. There was no mirror in that bathroom, but when she came back down she noticed the constant giggling. I wasn’t joining in with them now as I felt really bad, now I was sober. I was ashamed of myself. Harsh sunlight was coming in through the curtains that nobody had bothered to draw, illuminating my shame; my brief searing moment in the sun with these hateful arseholes.

‘I’m going to call my dad to pick me up,’ Cherry said.

I panicked then, so I took her up to the main bathroom and showed her her face in the mirror above the bath.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She was horrified. She cried. And then she noticed the witchy beauty spot.

‘A beauty spot?’ she exclaimed, turning to me. ‘Like Elizabeth Taylor?’

I blushed. I blushed a hungover crimson.

‘Oh my God, you joined in,’ she said. I went even redder. ‘You think I’m just a stupid ugly little Chinese girl, too. I’ve got to go to a wedding today! How am I going to get this off?’

Tears came to my own eyes. I knew in that instant I had lost her as a friend and I totally deserved to.

‘You of all people,’ she said, and then she went downstairs and out of my life. She never called round for me again and when I went to visit her at the takeaway her dad said she wasn’t there. Every time. And much later, if I ever reluctantly called in for sweet ’n’ sour chicken and Dad’s favourite Singapore noodles, and she was behind the counter, we’d have the most awful of small talk conversations, as she purposefully jabbed through Cosmopolitan magazine, and, if she looked up at me, I’d see the vestigial hatred in her eyes.