I thought she might laugh at that, but instead she took a deep breath and turned to me again. Her expression was serious, her pencilled brows knitted together and her mouth a thin line. She pressed a cerise painted nail to her temple.

‘It’s harder for Liam,’ she quietly said, ‘because he thought my mum was his mum too.’

I took a moment to let that settle.

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Forget it,’ she said, shaking it off.

I wasn’t sure I could.

‘Now,’ she carried on, ‘about this job.’

‘I know it’s weird,’ I told her, ignoring her pointed change of direction, ‘but you can talk to me, Chelsea. I’m not going to gossip to anyone about you behind your back, you know.’

I had never thought I’d be able to forgive her for what she’d put me through, but she’d lost her mum too and I realised now that she’d had to deal with more than that alone. If I could help her, and Liam, then I would.

‘God,’ she said, with a flash of her former anger. ‘You really are bloody perfect, aren’t you?’

‘Far from it,’ I said, imagining myself standing next to the wonder that was Maya, ‘but I am a good listener.’

She wilted again and a few seconds later the words began to flow.

‘I had Liam when I was fourteen years old,’ she told me. ‘Me, him and Mum moved to Wynmouth a year later. Mum raised him as her own and I retook a year at school which is why I’m older than you are.’

I hadn’t realised she was.

‘I had to repeat year ten and I made a point of picking on you from my very first day because I didn’t want anyone to mess with me. You, with your festive obsessed father, were the easiest target and that was why I singled you out.’

I looked at her and blinked, taking a moment to let it all sink in. That certainly explained her earlier actions, which had resembled those of a tigress protecting her cub.

‘So, you used me as a smokescreen.’ I stated rather than asked. ‘By getting our classmates to laugh at me and scrutinise my life, they didn’t bother to delve too deeply into yours?’

‘Yes,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘That’s the gist of it.’

Thinking back, I remembered that my first year at school, before she had arrived, hadn’t been all that bad. On a personal level, I’d been in bits, but the academic side of things had been okay. However, Wynter’s Trees had been fully operational by the time Chelsea arrived and that was when my school life had taken a nosedive. The few friends I’d made who thought Wynter’s Trees was cool, soon changed their minds when Chelsea rocked up.