‘Do you like this?’ she said, pulling out a gold tube. ‘It’s dusky rose, my favourite shade.’

She took the top of the tube and wound it up to reveal what looked like a big red crayon.

‘Is that what you paint with?’ I said as she passed it to me to take a closer look.

‘My face, yes,’ she said, giggling. ‘Do you ever wear make-up?’

‘No,’ I said, handing back the lipstick. I didn’t really know what she was talking about, to be honest.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said, pulling out a tub with glittery powder inside. ‘You’d look lovely with a bit of mascara and blusher. Hey, why don’t I give you a makeover?’

I had no idea what a makeover was, but I liked being with Isobel and I didn’t want the time to end so I agreed. When I said yes, she clapped her hands together and looked so excited, like she’d just won the biggest prize in the world. Then she brought a chair over to the bed and sat down in front of me.

‘I’m going to start with moisturizer,’ she said, squeezing a line of white cream out of a silvery tube. ‘Then we’ll have a good base for the make-up.’

While she applied the make-up, which made my face tickle and my nose go sneezy, she told me more about herself. She goes to school in Threshfield, which is about five miles away. It’s a big school, she said, and kids go there from all over Yorkshire, some coming in from as far as Leeds. She said she liked Art and History best and was thinking of studying one of them at university. I had no idea what she was talking about but it sounded lovely. I wanted to tell her about the stories I’d read in the books from the mobile library – about Anne of Green Gables and Great Expectations (my two favourites), about the poem in Sarge’s book about love being like water and the photo of the dead mother in the desert, and how all those things made me feel. But every time I tried to get the words out, my brain froze. I felt like my world would seem so small and silly to Isobel so I kept it all in my head and listened to her while she told me about things I’d never heard of like netball, revision timetables and gel nails.

The way she talked about those things, with that serious look on her face, made me think they must be very important so I nodded my head and said ‘hmm’ a lot, though to be honest it was all a bit boring. But then, when she was putting some weird black stuff on my eyes that smelt like creosote, she started to giggle. I asked her what was up and she said that I was funny. I asked her why and she said it was a good thing, that I wasn’t like the other girls. I was sweet. Sweet wasn’t a word I would use to describe myself but Isobel seemed to think I was and that made me happy. She continued with the make-up then, but while she was doing it she asked if I’d ever had a boyfriend and I just went quiet because I didn’t really know what she meant. I hadn’t had any friends, boy or girl. Isobel smiled then and said that she had a boyfriend. She said he was older than her and lived away from the village but he was really ‘hot’ and they met up lots to do stuff. I asked what kind of stuff and she started giggling again and said that they did a lot of kissing and were going to do much more once they could find the right place.