‘Nothing beats a crumpet.’ I watched mine ooze butter onto my plate. The mint tea was less up my street though.

‘Melissa.’ Ruby plopped globules of jam onto her own crumpet. ‘I – I want to talk to you about something. I do have an idea of what’s been going on.’

‘Oh?’ We’d already discussed Rex to the point of boredom. Last night Ali had even suggested I had a daddy complex, which made me shiver, and Ruby had quietly suggested I call the police.

I was still debating it.

‘I finally realised, when I went round to Pat’s the other day.’ Ruby looked up at me now. ‘I recognised him.’

‘Recognised who?’ My heart had begun to bump uncomfortably as I licked butter from my fingers. I knew very well who.

‘I saw you with him in the summer, you know. Just before the street party. Down those garages on North Street. But perhaps you want to tell me yourself?’

‘It’s not what you think.’ I didn’t want to tell her anything.

‘What was it then?’

‘I was – I wasn’t coping.’

‘So’ – she looked pained – ‘are you sleeping with him then?’

‘God, no!’ I think my mouth might have dropped open. ‘With Laz? He’s a baby.’

‘I couldn’t see it somehow.’ She grinned. ‘So – what then?’

‘You won’t like it, Ruby.’ I felt the shame cover me, and I went for the joke. ‘He was great for a little livener. Got a fabulous sideline going on.’

‘Hang on. Drugs?’ Her mouth fell open. ‘Laz is – he’s dealing?’

‘’Fraid so.’ I nodded slowly. ‘He’s pretty handy with a chemistry set.’

There was a long pause. A siren pierced the silence, then a helicopter.

‘So you’re saying Laz is a dealer? Blimey.’ She was really shocked. ‘I thought they had it sussed, you know. The perfect – if somewhat holy – family. Paul and Pat, the perfect parents.’

‘No one’s got it sussed, hon, have they?’ I stared at my own feet. ‘Not really.’

‘Don’t you think you’d better tell them?’ she asked quietly. ‘About Laz?’

Now I did look at her, appalled. ‘Ruby!’

But I knew this much: I didn’t want that life anymore.

She wasn’t the only one who’d rumbled me.

Fin had murmured, in the dawn of that one day, ‘I saw that tall lad, you know, hanging around yours.’ Pushing my hair out of my face. ‘Earlier.’

‘Yeah?’ I’d met his eyes bravely, the ice-blue irises shot with tiny flecks of black.

‘Yeah. I know what you were up to that night in that bathroom. It’s no good you killing yourself, doll, with that crap. You’re better than that.’

I thought of the library card, the policewoman returning it to its rightful owner, Cecilia. But it was me who’d left it there. ‘I know,’ I’d murmured into the pillow. ‘I know, Fin. It’s just been – tough.’

The helicopter circled the estate, searchlight strobing through the streets. Ruby and I looked at one another.