‘It’s been my experience, that people who are – well, angry I suppose – are sometimes unkind. They can’t help themselves, and usually they don’t mean to be cruel.’

‘I did,’ said Maude without thinking, ‘I didn’t like her and I wanted to make her – miserable.’

She could barely remember where or how it began, it must have been something small at first, the odd word, an unkind joke. But it had escalated, unflattering photos taken unawares, cruel captions added, images shared among their little group at first, then posted online, then sent to her – to Millie, Millie Butler – with messages that started out as fake queries for her health and rapidly turned into threats, instructions on how to lose weight, links to websites that encouraged eating disorders, self-harm, worse.

It had felt good, to be so certain that no one would be looking at her, chubby little Maude Clarke with her rubbish mum and dad, to know that she could make people look else-where. To make someone else miserable for a change. It wasn’t her fault Millie had taken it all so seriously; hiding a knife in her bedroom, trying it out for real – the cutting thing. Little scrapes and scratches leading to scars that might never fade. It wasn’t her fault some of the cuts had been so deep; that they thought Millie had meant to . . .

To her surprise, Carolyn burst into laughter. ‘Well, at least you’re honest about it,’ she said, and then, ‘Be careful, you don’t want to damage that, do you?’

She was squeezing the shoe far too hard; the soft leather was crumpling, and the sole was beginning to buckle. ‘Sorry.’ Maude opened her hand and let it fall softly onto the bed. ‘I’m not really supposed to have it,’ she said. ‘Nell says we have to put it back.’

‘Well, she always was bossy,’ said Carolyn, picking the shoe up. ‘Has she been giving you a hard time? About school?’

‘A bit,’ said Maude, ‘she says she’s disappointed. No one else got – sent home early. Just me.’ They had dropped her in it, one by one. It was all Maude’s idea, they’d said. She had started it; she had found the worst of the sites online and said they should send them to Millie. She was the one who wouldn’t stop – she didn’t know why she bothered to stay friends with them.

‘Really?’ Carolyn held the shoe up to the light, inspecting the stitching that ran around the heel. ‘Well, if it’s any comfort, she was no angel herself.’

‘But I bet she never . . .’ Maude couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, because it wasn’t bullying, not exactly, because that would mean she was a bad person. But if it wasn’t bullying, she wasn’t sure what it was.

‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Carolyn, and she looked different, Maude thought, sadder.