‘What’s going on here?’ Gretel said, her voice both delighted and dangerous. ‘Jesse, do you like Brooke?’

The implication in her tone was clear. I was not worthy of being liked, as least not by Jesse.

Jesse’s face was very red now. He stood up quickly, without looking at me, which was my first clue as to what would come next. He looked at Gretel and the five or six guys standing behind her, and laughed and shook his head and said, ‘Do I like Brooke? No. No. Fuck, no.’

I stared up at him, shocked.

‘No offence,’ he said, looking back at me and quickly away again, rubbing his hand over his mouth. His eyes looked desperate, there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. My mouth was dry. I had no idea what to do or say. I felt like my insides were liquifying. I had emotional whiplash. Kissed and publicly rejected within the timespan of a Harry Styles song.

‘That’s harsh, man,’ one of the guys said to Jesse. ‘She’s not that bad.’ But then they were all talking about something else, complaining they hated the song, and Gretel picked up her phone to skip it. Jesse walked over to help her choose another song, leaning his head in extra close to hers, and I was left still sitting there, alone.

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and texted Mum to come and get me. She would be at least half an hour, maybe longer, and I considered sitting by the dirt road in the dark to wait for her, which I calculated carried about a fifty per cent risk of murder, but still seemed better than being here. Gretel’s mother came downstairs to get more wine and took one look at me, sitting on the couch pale-faced and trembling, and brought me upstairs to sit awkwardly between her and her husband and watch Midsomer Murders with them until my mum arrived.

On Monday morning, I ignored Jesse on the bus. I had thought maybe he would text me over the weekend, but he didn’t. I had typed and then deleted so many messages to him that Mum and Lauren both demanded to know what was going on. I didn’t tell them. Later, I would let Lauren know that Jesse and I had had a fight, but I never gave her the details. It was too personal. It was too humiliating.