Zadie looked aggrieved. She came to sit on the bed next to Chloe, putting her hand on her arm. Chloe’s stomach twisted at the intimacy of the touch.

‘God, no,’ said Zadie. ‘Sorry, I’m being useless, I should explain. My parents are coming this afternoon and I need them to think that I’m living here.’

‘Why?’

Zadie sighed. ‘It’s such a saga, but – don’t think I’m awful, all right? So, they’re a bit over-protective, kind of controlling, and they’d be furious if they found out that I wasn’t staying here. It was part of the deal of them letting me come.’

‘So where do you actually live?’

‘With Max. My boyfriend. We’ve been together for years so, obviously we wanted to live together. But my parents are such psychos, if they find out that I’m not living here, then they’ll probably stop paying my fees or something obscene like that.’ She delivered the information at a million miles an hour, so fast that Chloe could only just follow what she was saying. ‘Anyway, my little brother, he’s such an angel – I mean, not an angel at all, he’s been thrown out of about seven boarding schools – anyway, he warned me they were making a “surprise visit”, which clearly is code for coming to check that I’m doing as I’m told. So when they get here I need them to think that I’m living here. With you.’

Chloe frowned and slowly got to her feet. Shyly, she pulled the blankets into a tangle on Zadie’s bed. ‘Then you need to make your bed look like you’ve slept in it. Won’t they be suspicious if it’s too neat?’

Zadie’s face lit up with a huge smile. Her teeth were white, with a tiny gap between the two front ones, an imperfection that would have spoiled someone else but only stood to make this girl more beautiful. ‘You’re so right. They’ll think I’m trying to hide something if I’m too tidy. I used to get about fifty demerits a term for having a messy room at school.’ She turned to look at the neat collage of photos above Chloe’s bed and the fairy lights wound around her bedframe. ‘You’re tidy,’ she said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

‘My mum is a neat freak,’ Chloe admitted. ‘It wasn’t much of a choice in my house.’

‘Mine, too!’ exclaimed Zadie. ‘She fires every cleaner we have because they don’t do it like she would.’