I was an idiot for agreeing to the tattoo. I knew it wouldn’t stop Billy from hassling me but I thought it would buy me more time. I’m totally skint. My next student loan doesn’t come through until next term and Jake’s been paying for everything. I’ve been trying to save the £30 he gives me each week for bus fare and food but it’s impossible. It’s £168 to get the train up to Granddad’s house in Edinburgh. When I was Googling how to hitchhike from Bristol I read loads of horror stories about women getting raped or killed and I can’t risk it. I’m going to have to nick some money. Claire’s always leaving her bag lying around and Jake chucks his wallet on the floor when we get back from the pub. I don’t want to steal from them but what choice do I have?

Amy offered to let me sleep on her floor but she lives with her parents and I need to get out of Bristol. If Billy puts the photos up on Facebook they’ll go viral and people round here think I’m a slag as it is. That’s if I don’t get arrested for sleeping with someone underage. No. I need to disappear. To vanish in the middle of the night. Billy can’t threaten me any more if I’m gone. He can’t blackmail me.

But what about Jake? I can’t let myself think about him. It’s going to kill me to leave him. It’ll kill him too. And he’ll never know why.

Why did I have sex with Billy? Why? I wish I could rewind time. If I’d taken a different route back from Amy’s last August, I never would have bumped into Billy outside the pub. He wouldn’t have confided in me about his dad kissing Miss Christian. He wouldn’t have started texting me all the time. We wouldn’t have gone for a drink. I wouldn’t have kissed him. None of this would have happened if I’d turned left instead of right.

Chapter 66

KIRA

Thursday 5th February 2015

We can hear them arguing downstairs; Claire and Mark shouting at Billy for getting nicked by the police for stealing spray paint from B&Q. He texted me earlier, saying I should prepare for his impending death. He must have sent it from Claire’s car after she picked him up from the police station. He knew his dad would kill him when he found out what he’d done.