“I got off with Adam,” Veronica grinned almost at once, flopping onto Sarah’s bed.

Sarah furrowed her forehead. Immediately, she wished she’d remained in the dark. “Which one was Adam?”

“The really fit one with the blue t-shirt. The one I was talking to. Eliza says he’s really cool.”

“Don’t remember.”

Now Veronica frowned slightly. “How’s your headache?”

“Bit better.” Sarah rubbed her temples for authenticity. “So?”

“So?”

“So? Go on then. What was it like?”

“Did you really have a headache, Sarah?” Veronica sat a little further back on the bed and stared at her seriously.

“Of course I did.”

“You weren’t just scared of playing those games?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Sarah threw a teddy bear at Veronica. A little too hard. It hit her on the neck.

“Ow.”

Veronica stood up and moved to her bed where she set about taking off her shoes.

“So?” Sarah prompted again.

“Eliza said you were scared. But you know you could have just said ‘nervous’, if you didn’t want them to touch you.”

“I had a headache!” Sarah barked.

“O-kay.” One by one, Veronica removed a row of bangles from her wrist.

Sarah gritted her teeth. “Sooo?”

“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow,” Veronica answered flippantly, pulling off her jeans and unbuttoning the ridiculous body with the stupidly placed poppers, that made Sarah feel like she was in a babygro. “Too tired now,” Veronica softened, yanking on an oversized t-shirt and crashing her head against the pillow. “Night.”

The next day, however, and for the remaining three that Veronica was there, she didn’t tell Sarah what it had been like to kiss someone. And Sarah didn’t ask again. Although they still swam, and played cards, the long, expansive days of summer seemed to have lost their openness, their wile-away-ness. Things felt fissured, the first cracks of childhood. And Sarah noted that Veronica spent much of her remaining time either on the phone to Adam, or giggling from inside Eliza’s bedroom. The two of them seemed suddenly to have secret things to discuss, and if Sarah appeared at the door, they would go quiet and sullen. One afternoon, Eliza crimped Veronica’s hair. Another evening, Veronica borrowed Eliza’s top when they all went out for dinner. Sarah spent a lot of time rolling her eyes. They didn’t return to TCR. Or mention it.

Until, on Veronica’s last day, they were packing up down at the pool, Sarah long-sufferingly listening to another idiotic detail about Adam with what she hoped was unspoken but noticeable disapproval, when she remembered that her favourite swimming costume was still in TCR, and ran through the pool house to get it. She had only been inside the room for a second, when the door slammed.

Sarah’s first thought was that it was windy, and the door did that sometimes, so it was with a vestige of calm that she tried the handle. But the door wouldn’t budge.

Sarah’s stomach clenched. Already, the single window seemed tinier, and the switch for the light a million miles away in all its good being outside the room. She tried the handle again, pulling hard, imprinting the shape of it deep into her clutching palm. For a second, she thought she felt somebody moving it from the outside, then there was definitely the sound of a key turning, and for a moment she felt her body flood with cool relief. She even stood back to wait for the door to open. But instead, a few seconds later, she heard Veronica’s voice, not just beyond wood, but far outside: “Just going up to hang with Eliza!”