‘Why not?’

‘Because the whole thing will take ten times longer! I’m serious. There was a sixteen-year old kid last time, and my God, the hassle. They had to get someone in to be an appropriate adult for her, and it took hours.’

‘Oh. Right.’ I mentally rehearsed my fake year of birth in case I was asked: 1965, not 1966. 1965, 1965, 1965…

Half an hour or so later, we arrived at Reading Police Station. I was dying for a pee, having not been since the train, but dreading what the arrangements would be. I’d seen Porridge on TV, the steel toilet in a corner … I couldn’t.

All sixteen of us were escorted into the station and herded up to the desk. The young arresting officer (whose face had returned to milky white again) announced to the custody sergeant: ‘These ladies were caught at twenty-one nineteen on April the first, trespassing on MOD property, contrary to Section Five of the military defence law, and brought here to be detained…’ I tuned out after that, still fretting about Pete’s rucksack, my swelling bladder and my parents’ reaction when I rang them to admit where I was. But then I heard him announce that we were all to submit to a full body search.

Shit! No. I felt my bowels turn liquid, and I clutched Samantha’s furry sleeve. ‘I can’t do that!’ I said, in a small panicky voice.

She hugged me. ‘It’s fine, really. It’s over real fast.’

I was so glad she was there, but it didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.

We shuffled forwards to be booked in, and when it was my turn, I stared into the custody sergeant’s weary bloodshot eyes as he cautioned me: ‘You’re entitled to a solicitor free of charge, and you’re entitled to have someone informed of your arrest. Do you want us to inform someone?’

As advised by Samantha, I shook my head, but I couldn’t prevent tears of longing rolling down my face at the thought of Mum and Dad coming to my rescue. It would be worth all the inevitable shouting, the disappointment, the grounding, just to be home tucked up in my own bed – after a long sit on the toilet, in my own bathroom…

But she’d told me not to let the police tell them, and I trusted her.