Maggie had made cakes, including a lemon drizzle, and I was putting it onto plates when some more people arrived. Farah shut the door behind her. It was hard not to stare. I’d not seen her for ages – or at least it felt like it. Each time I saw her my stomach spun like the reels on a fruit machine. I concentrated on the lemon drizzle cake.

‘Hi,’ said Farah, coming to stand in front of me. ‘This is it. D-Day.’

‘I guess.’ I didn’t know what to say to her anymore. Things were still a bit awkward between us. And I had a gift for saying the wrong thing.

‘I’m doing National Citizen Service. What are your plans for the summer?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got a job on a farm.’

‘Maggie’s?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I was a bit hacked off with her assuming that. ‘A farm in Furrow’s Cross. Dipping the sheep. That sort of thing. It’ll look good on my CV when I apply to universities.’ Me and Maggie had been doing some investigation into agricultural courses and I was more fired up than ever.

‘Cool,’ she said. We looked anywhere but at each other. ‘It’s good to have a break from studying. I was fed up with it,’ she added.

‘Me too.’ I nodded.

Farah tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Especially as I was baby-sitting Joshua Kemp,’ she said.

Okay now she’d got my attention. ‘How d’ya mean?’ I asked.

‘His mum knows my mum and they were worried he was falling behind so my mum volunteered me to help him revise. Total waste of time. The loser kept talking about how ace he was rather than studying. In the end I told my parents it was affecting my revision and that got me out of it.’

‘So you and he…’ I hardly dare ask the question.

‘We weren’t going out. We never were. You just jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

I tried not to grin but I was chuffed to hear this. ‘Right. Sorry about that. Lemon drizzle cake?’ In my excitement I almost shoved it up her nose.

We gathered around the table and Maggie called the meeting to order. The door opened and in walked the bloke from the council Maggie called the Bigwig. The guy was bald so I’ve no idea why she calls him that. Sarcasm maybe? Christine almost fell over in her haste to distance herself from the meeting and began reordering books on the shelf at high speed and most annoyingly in the wrong order.

‘Christine, I need a word,’ said the council Bigwig, taking Christine out the back. Which was a bit odd because it’s basically a tiny kitchen and cupboard. Not the best place to have a meeting especially if he was about to confirm that she’d lost her job.