Deciding I’d risk it and see what happened, I disentangled myself from Ruby and clambered back into my seat, adjusting it to its normal position. I turned the key to start the engine. Click click click. I turned it again. Click click click.

I looked at Ruby. She frowned.

Click click click.

“What does that mean?” Ruby asked.

“I’ve driven three times since I got my license. I have no idea. Google it.”

A couple of seconds later she told me the battery was dead. The car, not her phone. I checked the dash and realized I hadn’t turned the lights off. Dad was going to kill me. Although that would come later. Right now I had no idea what to do.

“What do we do?” I asked, getting panicked.

Ruby googled again.

“Do you have a battery charger?”

“No?” I didn’t even know they made those for cars.

“Jump leads?”

“Uh, I don’t think so?” But I got out of the car and looked in the boot. There was an old sports bottle and a damp-looking Stephen King novel.

People were starting to pull out of the car park. I knocked on the window of the car next door and a woman in her thirties rolled down the window.

“Do you by any chance have jump leads?” I asked.

“Sorry, love.” She rolled her window back up.

I opened the driver’s side door of Dad’s car again and leaned in. “Anything else?”

“What about them?” Ruby pointed to the car on the other side of us. It was one of those cars that had been lowered to the ground, and it had rims that probably cost more than my dad’s whole car. I tried to sneak a glance at who was inside. A bunch of boys, maybe the same age as us, maybe a little older. Definitely too high to drive.

“Um . . . I don’t really want to ask them,” I said, imagining what they might say to two girls stranded at night in a rapidly emptying car park.

I got back in the car and locked the door. This was the part of the horror movie where we got murdered by a “helpful” passerby. It was bad enough that our groping session had been hit by rom-com-style farce. I didn’t want to tempt fate with horror. The consequences were a bit more gruesome than a bruised ego. Then again, if it really was a horror movie, the murderer was already in the back seat. I glanced back there. Just an empty pick and mix bag.

“I guess you’re going to have to call your parents?” Ruby said, biting on her lip ring. “Do you think they’ll be angry?”

I realized then that Ruby had no idea my parents weren’t happily married and normal. Why would she? I hadn’t told her anything.