She closed the window and shut out the sounds of the waves and gulls, then cast her eyes around the bedroom with disdain. Stuck here for the whole damn summer. Jesus. It was no better than a prison cell. Nothing more than essential furniture – a bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table – and grim cream and grey striped curtains at the window. There were no pictures. No plants in pots. The only thing of mild interest were the four white walls, which changed shade as the sun moved through the day. Edie thought of Tamsyn in the house, her wild hair and regional accent contaminating the designer emptiness which Edie’s parents believed to be the height of sophistication. Minimalism they called it – all the rage in New York, darling – which as far as Edie could tell meant echoing rooms with too much white and expensive pieces of statement furniture chosen to be coveted not used. But in this room, her room, the minimalism wasn’t a design feature. This was just a room that didn’t matter.

Edie lay back on the bed. She’d had a dismal end of term. Everything had spiralled from bad to worse and now she’d had enough of every single person she knew. If life were a poker game, she’d swap her whole hand of cards. Her father barely knew she existed. Her mother was forever gummed up with pills – pills to wake up, pills to calm down, pills for energy, pills for sleep – all liberally washed down with whatever booze was closest to hand. Edie had been in Cornwall for four days and was already climbing the walls. Most of her time was spent daydreaming about escape. Shoving a few things into a bag and leaving in the dead of night, walking down the moonlit lane to the main road and hitching a lift to anywhere. But of course she wouldn’t do it. Everybody knew girls like her who hitchhiked alone got raped or strangled.

Maybe Tamsyn would be enough to get her through the summer. She was certainly interesting. Unusual. Different to the people Edie usually met. She was the daughter of a cleaner for starters. The people Edie knew were all the offspring of doctors or barristers or duller-than-dull bores who ran boring companies doing boring things with numbers. Her own father was something of an anomaly, a well-known restaurant critic turned New York Times bestseller. Whilst her mother was a tragic cliché. A failed model turned socialite wife with a penchant for getting off her face. Between them they didn’t have one friend who was a cleaner or a shopkeeper or anything remotely normal. They’d sealed themselves in a bubble and floated about in a manufactured world of braying voices, nauseating opinions, and a universal lack of morals. It made Edie’s stomach heave. Having no friends was better than having fake ones.

She reached for her Walkman and slipped the headphones on. Yes. Hanging out with Tamsyn, the trespassing daughter of a cleaner, with unkempt red hair and a look of adoration, would hopefully make the purgatory more bearable.