Milly was busy cataloguing all her woes. She had no affection from Dad, it was obvious she was a disappointment to him, a girl. No affection either from Nipper, he’d screwed her like she was a tart or something, there didn’t seem to be any actual love involved. She was rotten, academically. Thick as shit. She knew it. Which would have been fine, if only she’d been good-looking, like Belle. Belle was her friend, but unlike Milly she had other friends, other interests. She was always off doing stuff. Most of the time, Milly felt so damned lonely. So she took refuge in books, in food, and then her arse just got bigger and bigger, she was swelling up like a balloon, she hated her whole damned life.

She stood there, looking at Harlan’s closed bedroom door. When he was younger, there’d always been a sign on it: KEEP OUT!

Now the sign was gone, but she knew damned well that Harlan didn’t like anyone in there. Then she thought of him grinning through the pool house window at her, the bastard. She bit her lip and opened the door and went in, closing it quickly behind her. She looked around. It was a normal boy’s room, but scrupulously tidy. That was Harlan, wasn’t it. His brain might be a sewer, but outwardly everything was order and calm. He kept a blue-lit tank on one wall, and it held a lizard, standing still as a statue. Crickets jumped around in the cage, unaware of their danger.

Milly went over to the window. She could just about glimpse the pool from here, and she could see Harlan, still laid out on his sunbed. Nipper was in the pool’s shallow end. Belle was sitting on the edge of it, shouting instructions, which Nipper was ignoring. Jill was standing beside her daughter as if on guard, with her hands on hips.

Milly started looking around. She’d never been in Harlan’s room before. She was curious. It would be useful, having an insight into Harlan, even if she did hate the perverted twat. She thumbed through his CDs. Heavy metal, all of them. He had box files stacked on his shelves, royal blue in colour, and she pulled one out, opened it. Just boring bloody leaflets about keeping exotic pets. She snapped the file closed and went on to the next. More about keeping tarantulas and snakes, pages about caring for gerbils, which apparently were territorial and ate each other at the drop of a hat.

Oh yuck.