My cheeks burst into flame. ‘No… I… I was… Talking to myself.’

‘How strange.’

She turned and walked back towards the door. Was this my signal to go? Was I free? I hesitated, about to turn away, but she glanced back with narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t even think about leaving. If you move an inch, you’ll be sorry.’

My stomach hardened to a tight ball. Who was she? Why was she here? As I did what I was told and stood stock still, water collecting at my feet, I was hit with the sudden idea that perhaps she might also be trespassing and that in a remarkable twist of fate we’d both arrived at the house, uninvited, at the same time. Perhaps I wasn’t the only girl who watched this place from an out-of-sight vantage point and snuck in when nobody was home.

This thought bought a little clarity with it. My mind seemed to de-mist. Whoever she was, whatever reason she had to be here, the most important thing was to convince her not to tell the Davenports. If Mum lost her job she’d have to do more hours at the bloody chip shop or, worse still, sign on, something I knew full well she’d rather die than do.

The girl walked back out of the door. She held two bottles in her hand and an opener in the other.

‘I like your dress,’ she said as she neared me.

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly so didn’t say anything in return.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘My dress?’

She made a face like I was stupid. ‘Er, yeah, your dress.’

‘It’s my mum’s. From the Sixties. She wore it to a Rolling Stones concert.’

‘Retro?’ Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘Très fashionable.’

I let my breath go with a nervous laugh. I was struck again by how pretty she was. Not pretty like Alice Daley or Imogen Norris – who were universally acknowledged to be the prettiest girls in school, all pushed-up boobs and bum-skimming skirts. No, this girl was graceful and poised and pretty like Princess Di, if Princess Di wore black make-up, a hundred bangles and had a silver stud in her nose.

‘Très… cool,’ she said.

I managed to nod.

‘You’re very lucky to have a cool mother. Mine,’ she said deliberately, ‘is very, very, uncool.’

I thought of the photograph of my parents, the one that had his writing on the back:

Angie and Me. Odeon Theatre, Guildford, March 1965.

In the picture my mum wore the rainbow dress. She was seventeen, not long engaged, delirious with love. Her hair was held back by a thick red scarf, feline eyes outlined with liner, her lips and skin pale as was the fashion. My dad wore a white shirt and a thin black tie. His hair was slicked back and he held a cigarette loosely in his fingers. I closed my eyes for a second, caught a flash of him singing me to sleep, smelt the cigarettes stuck to his skin.