Over the past couple of years, she had honed her nonchalant act. If she said so herself, she performed a decent ‘little old me’ routine. Don’t change. Remember where you came from. That was her mantra. She didn’t want anyone in Kilmitten claiming she’d lost the run of herself. At the same time, she had to ensure that they understood her success, that they knew she was making advances on a stage far bigger than their own. The tightrope was a slippery one.

There were days when Tess went to a quiet place and punched the air with joy. And there were other days when she couldn’t keep a lid on her delight. At the start, even minor changes to her life had provided a thrill. She remembered the first time she’d been able to afford the flight home rather than having to squeeze onto the train and ferry. No more jostling for space with the women who’d spent their life savings at Argos. She’d savoured new experiences, no matter how small, no matter how offbeat. She’d called Nina from a bar in Berlin with the news that there was a condom vending machine in the ladies’ toilets. ‘A condom machine?’ Nina had laughed. ‘What sort of brazen hussies drink there?’ Then, her stories had become more exciting, the developments more dramatic. A few months back, she’d woken Nina and Tom with the news that she’d met River Phoenix at a party in New York. Surprisingly, Tom had been the more impressed of the two. ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Nina had moaned, before handing over the phone.

If Tess was being honest, there were also times when her new world felt darker than dark. When she saw and heard things that made her think, Now, hold on a minute. She’d thought she had demons yet, compared to some of the stories she’d been told, her life was a chapter from Enid Blyton. Take her friend Marla, who’d been raped by her ‘uncle’ and beaten by her mother. Or another of the popular girls, Avery, who hid her heroin habit by injecting between her toes. Or Tia, who ate cotton wool to take the edge off her hunger.

There was relentless pressure to remain thin, thin, thin. This came easily to Tess: a day or two on a Granny-Smiths-and-Marlboro-Lights diet and she was as narrow as a coat hanger. Come to think of it, that was what she was: a walking, pouting coat hanger. But what if that changed? What if she became one of the gobble-it-down-and-throw-it-up girls, measuring out calories in vodka shots and celery sticks?

And, always, nestling at the back of her head, were the other questions: if her father saw her, would he know who she was? If he did know, would her success be enough to coax him out of hiding?