She seemed amused by this. ‘Do you know much about them then?’

I shook my head. Another lie. I knew lots. I knew what newspaper he read, what clothes they wore, the position he sat in when he wrote at his typewriter. I knew she turned her sun lounger to follow the arc of the sun and when, every now and then, a sparrowhawk cried out he’d look up and search the sky for it. I knew they let food go to waste. That vegetables were left to blacken in the fridge beside sour milk, and that abandoned bread grew mould in the shiny steel bread bin. I knew they left their bed unmade when they left for London and I knew where they kept the sheets my mother would change for them. I knew what books were piled up on his bedside table and what her night cream smelt like and how soft her silk dressing gown felt against my cheek.

Edie lifted the Coke bottle and drained the last inch. ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know they have a daughter. They’re barely aware of it themselves. They keep me in a boarding school so they don’t have to think about it.’

‘A boarding school?’

Edie nodded.

I had visions of great Gothic buildings and Malory Towers, hockey sticks and midnight feasts and huge panelled dining rooms where hundreds of these girls, identikit clones, gathered to sip soup from round silver spoons.

‘That must be amazing.’

‘It’s the pits. I loathe it. Every single girl there is a bitch and the teachers are idiots. Literally everybody there hates me and I hate them.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The head says I’m trouble. Rude and difficult. But,’ and here she paused and leant forward, ‘what the flying fuck does she fucking know about anything anyway?’

I couldn’t help but smile, and as I did the tension I’d been feeling since we first laid eyes on each other finally started to fade.

Then she needled her eyes at me and pointed. ‘You don’t hate me, do you?’

‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Not at all.’

She sat back. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a good thing the ’rents keep me in a boarding school. If they didn’t I’d be tempted to murder them. Maybe not him but definitely her.’

She smiled at me and I smiled back and as I did invisible strands of friendship began to stretch out between us.

‘Where do you go to school?’

‘The local comp. It’s a dump.’

‘I’d give anything to go to a comprehensive. Boarding school is so lame. Being at a comprehensive is cool, isn’t it? I bet you don’t even have to work. Our teachers are obsessed with results and the girls spend most of their time bingeing and chucking up. You’re actually really lucky.’

I thought about my school – teachers drowned out by constant chatting, blocked toilets with permanent Out of Order signs on them, the stench of the canteen – and shrugged.