And even if she hadn’t constructed it all from daydreams and wishful thinking, there were a million other reasons why he wouldn’t be there. He was weighed down with the trappings of adulthood. A home to go to, a car to drive home in, people who needed him. He wasn’t even hers to take. She was stealing him.

And yet there he was, leaning against the blank wall of the deserted holiday apartments and watching for her, a miracle in the dark.

It seemed simple at the start but it’s not now. Every time we meet it’s a risk. I don’t want him to get caught. Or me either, actually. I don’t want us to get caught.

They didn’t speak. That was the first rule, although quite how they’d agreed it was difficult to say. But in his face she saw the faint question: where shall we go? The second rule: he never initiated anything.

Sometimes his passivity irritated and even upset her. But it also made her feel powerful. She could stop it any time she wanted, for days or for weeks or for ever, and he’d never demand to see her, or shame her in front of her mates, or even ask why.

She wanted to take his hand, but she didn’t dare. She had more freedom than her friends, who were tangled in a tight network of aunts and uncles and parents’ friends from schooldays who had been each other’s bridesmaids and best men and best mates for all of their lives. Meanwhile, she floated free and unencumbered, just herself and her father. Nonetheless, the town was always watching. She was careful, to protect him as much as herself. She was fifteen. She was innocent. It would be him her father came for.

She turned the key over and over in her jacket pocket.

You think it’ll be simpler when one of you’s older, but it was easier when I was going out with Ewan. I mean, people expect teenagers to snog in bus shelters. The town’s full of hotel rooms, but we can’t exactly book one. I can’t bring him home. He can’t take me to his place.

She was in control, except she wasn’t. Someone else was working the levers when she slipped into the storeroom and whispered “tonight” in his ear. It had been on her all day, a heavy weight of expectation and need, the desire to prove – what? – something. That she could have him. That he was hers. That he wanted her so much, needed her so much, that he’d risk everything he had, just to be with her.

She rolled up the shutter a scant couple of feet and slipped beneath. The air in the café was cool and damp against her cheek. The power was on, but she didn’t dare turn on the lights. The harsh electric glow of the strips would seep past the shutters and tell someone, somewhere, that there were people up to no good in the Beach Café. If anyone had seen Alicia slipping off, they’d let her go, because as much as everyone liked her and her father they still didn’t really belong here, and telling Donald would be interfering. But business was business, and a potential break-in at the café would be passed on instantly to Emma’s dad, Henry. She knew this instinctively, without ever being told.