‘Hey, you,’ she drawled, grinning back and pushing her hair out of her face. ‘Long time, no see. I have your brother’s rucksack and sleeping bag back at my place. Got time for a coffee?’

I glanced across at my friends, who both raised their eyebrows at me. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Great, about Pete’s things. He’s been moaning about them for weeks. Samantha, these are my mates Charlotte and Julie. Charlotte and Julie, this is Samantha; we met at Greenham a couple of months ago.’

‘Ohhhh,’ they chorused, their faces alight with prurient interest. I immediately flushed scarlet, agonising that they could see how turned on I was just to be in Samantha’s presence. I had to glance down at my nipples to make sure they weren’t betraying me through my thin bra and white shirt. Samantha clocked me looking and I could have sworn she read my mind. Her lips twitched with amusement, and my blush developed a blush of its own.

‘Jump on. You can ride shotgun,’ Samantha said, wheeling her bicycle around on the path in a brisk 180-degree turn and patting the spring-loaded metal rack on the back of it.

I slung my schoolbag over my shoulder, climbed on and held myself steady by grasping the edges of the rack behind me in the way I’d seen teenage boys do, although I’d have preferred to wrap my arms around her waist. She pushed off and began to pedal hard back the way she’d just come.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I called over my shoulder to the girls, sticking my legs out to the sides to get them off the ground. As Samantha managed to get up a bit of speed, I could feel their eyes burning into the back of my head. There would be questions, I could tell, although I didn’t think they would suspect that there was anything sexual between us … would they?

Oh, who cares, I thought, as Samantha’s wheels crunched over the sandy gravel.

‘Follow the yellow brick road,’ I called.

‘Well, I am from Kansas,’ she called back, laughing, and I felt pure happiness – for the first time since Dad’s death.

‘So,’ she said, once we got into town, the girls mere specks in the distance behind us when I’d glanced back. ‘Where shall we go?’