Although she hadn’t been sure about hanging out with Tom and Conor, especially in a poxy old shed, she’d ended up enjoying herself. They weren’t the most popular guys at school but they weren’t the saddest either. You wouldn’t be embarrassed to say you’d had a drink and a smoke with them. Tess and Conor were two of a kind. Both had only one parent. The difference was, Conor remembered his mam. He’d been ten when the cancer took her away. Tess had never had a father. Or, to be more accurate, she’d never known him. He’d run away before she was born. When she asked about him, her mam waved her hands and said he wasn’t worth thinking about.

She’d expected that Tom and Conor would want to play spin the bottle or some such, but when the beer ran out and Tom couldn’t get any more, he’d said they should head home. ‘You don’t want to get grief from your folks,’ he’d argued. They’d hidden the empty bottles at the back of the shed and buried the cigarette butts in the snow. The boys had insisted on walking with them, which was sweet, if unnecessary. This was Kilmitten where nothing ever happened.

In her head, Tess had an alternative life where she was from somewhere far more exciting, a place where nobody gave a hoot how many parents she had. In this fantasy land, her mam had a large detached house, not a two-up two-down in a crumbling terrace. They never ran out of money before payday. They never had to eat cheese on crackers for dinner or share bathwater or wear ratty clothes. Tess always groaned when adults claimed that money wasn’t important. Oh, yeah? she’d think. Believe me, if you don’t have any, it’s very important.

All evening, she’d noticed Tom throwing gooey-eyed looks at Nina. Then again, everybody loved Nina: boys, parents … even teachers were mad about her. Tess and Nina had been friends since second class when their teacher had told them to share a desk. Mrs Nagle must have figured they wouldn’t have much to say to each other. Oh, the innocence of that poor teacher! Before the end of the day, they were giggling like eight-year-old maniacs. They discovered that they liked the same cartoons (Yogi Bear and Scooby-Doo), the same comics (Tammy and Bunty) and the same sweets (the three-for-a-penny chews that welded your teeth together). When Nina was sent to boarding school, Tess worried that she’d fall in with the pony-owning types and ignore her old friends. She was wrong. Nina said her new school was a dump and she wished she could go to St Ursula’s with everybody else. Tess thought she was crazy. She would happily have taken her chances at the posh school.