‘Remember your eyebrows?’ Her mum glanced at Michelle, on whom Bessie knew her mother laid the blame for the whole famous eyebrow incident. ‘You had lovely glossy brows, and now? Two thin little lines way up on your forehead, wispy spider’s legs that you have to keep plucking and plucking – I wish you’d never started that! You’ll regret it one day.’

She and Michelle exchanged a brief look; her mum clearly didn’t understand fashion. They had both wanted the brows of Cyndi Lauper and not Brooke Shields.

‘Stay there, don’t drip blood on the carpet, and I’ll go and see if we’ve got any plasters in the first-aid tin,’ her mum sighed, and trotted off along the landing.

The girls got dressed and made their way down the stairs. Michelle’s shins, now enviably shiny and hairless, looked fabulous beneath her baggy rolled-up dungarees. Bessie’s, on the other hand, not so much. She only gave her hems one roll, trying to hide the three round plasters that sat like traffic lights on her shin, permanently set to red from the seeping blood.

‘We should wear jeans tonight with our new sweatshirts,’ she declared, thinking that at least they might hide her injuries. Both she and Michelle had purchased hot-pink cropped sweatshirts from Chelsea Girl at the top of the high street only the day before, the result of months of saving, and vital to them matching for such an important social occasion as the party tonight.

‘Yep. Good idea.’

After a big birthday squeeze from her dad and an excited smile of encouragement from her mum, the girls linked arms as they walked past the posh, newish estate off Branch Road and headed towards school.

‘You nervous about seeing Lawrence tonight?’

‘Nope.’ This was the truth. ‘I’m not, actually.’

Michelle looked at her with wide eyes. ‘What, because you don’t like him? Have you changed your mind?’ she said quickly.

‘Not exactly.’ This felt easier than to confess that her nerves were minimal because she knew exactly what sex with Lawrence Paulson would be like.