I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the tape. Read and reread the list on the back. The letters blurred as my eyes misted with tears. Nobody had ever done anything like this for me before. I turned the tape over and on the other side, in larger black capitals, the words For Tamsyn were repeated, and around them Edie had drawn exquisite doodles, flowers, paisley, and skulls.

‘You’re so good at art.’

People didn’t just make mix tapes. Mix tapes took time. Care. They meant something. The only mix tapes I’d seen were the ones passed from school bag to school bag by the best looking boys to the girls who showed the most cleavage.

‘Thank you,’ I said quietly. I swallowed, trying not to let my voice crack with emotion. ‘It’s the best thing anybody’s ever given me.’

Edie laughed. ‘Jesus, you’ve had some crappy presents.’

Holding the cassette in my hand I was hit hard by how isolated I’d become. A friendless loner at school. It was difficult to be anything else. You have to work quite hard to get friends when you’re infected by death. That’s all they saw. I might as well have had festering sores all over my skin. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near me. They feared the sudden onset of tears, uncontrollable outbursts which sent me straight to the headmaster’s office. My grief made me unpredictable and that made them uneasy. Made them look at their feet and turn their backs on me. I told myself I didn’t care. That I wanted to sit alone at lunchtime. That I had no interest in having company at breaktime. That their airhead chatter irritated me. I had, after all, more important things to worry about than whether Smash Hits was cooler than Just Seventeen or if I’d prefer to get off with George Michael or Billy Idol. I’d built a wall around myself for protection. If I didn’t try to make friends there’d be no chance of rejection. But the cost of this was loneliness and getting excited because Kevin Chambers had asked me to dance only to find out he’d fingered the freak for a dare.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tamsyn

July 1986

I spent most of the morning unpacking chocolate and sweets in Ted’s shop and silently grumbling about not being up at the house.

Ted’s voice had become a low hum of background noise, like a mistuned radio you eventually grow immune to. Every now and then I nodded or mumbled a yes or a no or something which could be either.

A steady stream of people came in and out of the shop. Tourists mainly, there to buy sticks of lurid rock and boxes of fudge, postcards and small kegs of mead to take back for people they felt obliged to give gifts to.