They walked along the lakebed, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

‘I kind of imagined it cooler than this,’ said Bastian, and Norah didn’t have to look at Valerie to know that she was glaring at him with a mixture of scorn and pity. Everyone knew that Valerie only put up with Bastian because he was three years older than her and willing to ferry her around in his old VW Polo. He wasn’t her boyfriend; he was her chauffeur. Today, as usual, he’d done her bidding, falling in with her idea of blindfolding Norah and driving her to a place that she would—I swear to you, Norah—absolutely love.

They wandered around the drained reservoir for most of that hot spring afternoon, completely undisturbed after abandoning Bastian at the dam with his cigarettes and his stupid remarks. They ran off in different directions, then came together again, screeching and giggling; they spun wildly round and round and collapsed on the dry mud. They told each other they were on the bottom of a vast lake beneath a huge mass of water, but could still breathe and talk because they were mermaids—though not the kind who sacrificed their tails just because they’d seen a young man they liked the look of. No way.

‘No way,’ said Norah. ‘Not that kind.’

Later that day, they lay in Valerie’s back garden on the bumble bees’ approach path, surrounded by buttercups and daisies, and Norah watched a ladybird crawl over her fingers as if over hilly countryside.

Suddenly Valerie said, ‘I think I’m in love with Milo.’

Norah peered at the ladybird—the shiny red shell, the neat black dots that looked as if they’d been painted with a tiny brush.

‘Give me your hand,’ she said.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Valerie asked. She stretched out her hand and the ladybird climbed onto it.

‘Of course,’ Norah replied. ‘You fancy Milo. Who doesn’t?’

The ladybird crossed the back of Valerie’s hand with astonishing speed. She turned her hand and let it move over her palm, back and forth over her lifeline.

‘I didn’t say I fancy him; I said I’m in love with him.’

The ladybird had reached the tip of Valerie’s index finger and took off, maybe to find more girls lying on the grass, drinking warm iced tea and talking about boys, despite their vows to stay mermaids forever. They watched it go. It looked as if it were wearing a red cape, slit in the middle.

‘No,’ said Norah, ‘that’s not what you said.’

‘What?’

‘You said: “I think I’m in love with Milo.”’

Valerie rolled her eyes.

‘I am in love with him.’

Norah laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I was just thinking of Bastian,’ she said. ‘He’ll be devastated.’

And now Valerie laughed too and the warm spring day was so light and carefree, so beautifully insubstantial that Norah couldn’t later remember how it ended. Had Valerie’s dad got the barbecue going? Had they gone back to Norah’s and watched TV with her mum while Valerie painted Norah’s nails? Had they gone out on their bikes?