After school Jasmine was going to walk into town with Felicity. A lot of the shops were independent and quirky, the council constantly fighting against the franchises that had swallowed every other town. As a result, the prices were less than ideal and so Jasmine and Felicity spent most of their pocket money buying clothes in the charity shops. The upside was that the clothes in the charity shops were often designer and much cheaper than the independent shops whose target audiences were women over fifty and people who owned boats. It wasn’t a town for young people.

Jasmine liked it in Sidmouth, but she didn’t feel she had a lot in common with anyone apart from Felicity and they barely had anything in common, not really. Felicity’s home life was a mess; her mother drank and had a revolving-door policy on boyfriends. Jasmine was both jealous of Felicity and fiercely protective of her; she was the only real friend she had. She wondered if that had something to do with her family’s summers abroad. She didn’t usually get to spend the holiday roaming the streets and discovering new hangouts or even hanging out in the old ones. The worst thing was missing the folk festival. Almost all of her school friends’ summer stories came from that one week in August. The town transformed into a hive of activity, people coming from all over the world to visit the sleepy little place. Jasmine had been there for one day of it before and it was like being in another place entirely. There were street performers and Morris dancers everywhere you looked. Extortionately expensive tie-dyed clothing and lots of multicultural and vegan food stalls dotted the streets. She was happy she was going to be around for it this year, and she felt guilty for that. For the first time, her summer would be normal.

Felicity came from another school entirely a few years ago and Jasmine had sort of adopted her. Everyone else had their own cliques formed from primary school but the two girls drifted between them. They weren’t an obvious choice for best friends but somehow it worked. Felicity loved to tell Jasmine all the things she had missed over the summer, all the boys she got off with. Jasmine thought in part she was jealous of her adventures, but Jasmine was so much more jealous of Felicity’s adventures at home.

Jasmine got along with everyone at school, but it was because no one really knew her, no one took the time. Maybe that was why she threw herself into books, maybe that was why Mr Morrell thought she was interested in him; because she spent time with him instead of friends. The truth was, she didn’t have any real friends aside from Felicity, who was heavily involved in lots of sports clubs, anything to keep her late at school, anything to keep her from going home.