The school holidays felt like life in slow motion. Time could be stretched out; a bath could take an hour, preparing a meal could take two, a walk around the park could take the whole afternoon. Life in term time was faster, harsher; you couldn’t pause for a second. In five days she’d be back in the fast lane, back in Hannah Albright’s sights. Five days.

Last term, the girls in her class had invented a game where they sang songs whenever Minnie came into a room. They all high-fived each other when someone thought of a new one. ‘Driving in My Car’, ‘This Car of Mine’, ‘Life Is a Highway’; it was amazing how many songs there were about cars and driving.

Minnie had learnt to cope with the name-calling and the singing. Let them sing, let them laugh, don’t react – it stopped quicker that way. Hannah Albright was always the one that took it furthest, goading her for a reaction. In the last week of term things had notched up a gear. ‘Notched up a gear,’ Minnie sunk her head beneath the surface of the bath water – now she was even thinking like a car.

Part of the problem was that her best friend, Lacey, wasn’t in her class any more. She didn’t have anyone to stand up for her. Hannah, Pauline and a few of the other girls had taken to physically pushing her, yanking her hair. At one point someone had stabbed her with a pencil. This new violence scared Minnie. She didn’t know how to deal with it; it wasn’t something she could just ignore or silently endure.

She opened her eyes underneath the water, looking up at the stained, beige ceiling tiles through the shimmering lens of water. She broke the surface, filling her lungs with air, then pulled her legs towards her, hugging them against her chest. On her thigh she could still see the small purple welt from the pencil wound. It felt as though the girls at school just wanted to keep needling her, poking her until she snapped.