It was Lisa Markozy herself who told Sarah about Beth and Veronica. Apparently, it started while they were still eating pizza and playing truth or dare. Beth had spun the Coke bottle and it had landed on Veronica, who had chosen Truth. Beth’s question had been the following (Lisa recounted it word for word): “Do you sometimes wish that Sarah wasn’t a bit sad? And do you think she holds you back?” ‘Sad’ did not mean unhappy; it was their lingo for somebody who was a loser, not necessarily geeky but definitely socially stunted, too childish, not cool. On the cusp of puberty and teenage-dom, it was the biggest insult they could throw at each other. Of course, Veronica was caught. She could hardly say that Sarah wasn’t holding her back, because that would make her sad too, and Beth had cleverly elevated her as something different and better. But, “She should have told Beth to stop being a bitch,” Lisa declared. Instead, Veronica had confirmed Beth’s suspicions that Sarah was indeed the reason for her own curtailed coolness, and later they’d pulled their sleeping bags next to each other and whispered into the early hours. The next day, everybody somehow knew that Sarah’s uncle had tried once to kill himself – which was something she had told only Veronica – and also that Sarah wished she had bigger boobs.

In English on Monday, Sarah had sent Veronica a note to say that she should consider their friendship terminated, but Veronica had already been sitting next to Beth by then and showed her the note, and laughed. So it was definitely over, and that lunch break they gathered their friends by the lockers and announced together that they were broken up. There was general shock. Sarah and Veronica had been a two since, well, forever. It had been almost an entire year since they’d joined the school and their names ran into each other when people spoke. Saranveronica. Saranveronica. It had always slightly gratified Sarah and irritated Veronica that Sarah’s name came first.

But no longer. And unless she wanted to ‘swallow her pride’ and confess to her mother that worse than growing fed up with each other after a day, they were already not speaking – in other words, that Sarah was wrong and her mother had been right – there was no way she could tell anyone at home what had happened. Had Eliza not been entirely obsessed by her own life, then it was possible that even without being told, her sister may have guessed that something was up, and fixed it; but she didn’t. So Sarah awaited the arrival of her ex-best friend seven days into the summer holidays, freezing every time the phone rang, trepidatious both that it was and wasn’t Veronica’s mother calling to cancel. The call, however, never came and Veronica arrived, as planned, in time for lunch that Friday.

While the mothers were having tea in the kitchen, the girls, unspeaking, heaved Veronica’s suitcase up the stairs to Sarah’s room. A second bed had been pulled out of the spare room and Veronica sat on it, staring at her feet. Sarah sat opposite her, waiting. There was no reason that she should be the one to cave and speak first, she was on home ground. She folded her arms and crossed her skinny legs twice around themselves.