I grab the flimsy lilac throw I found in my mother’s wardrobe and put it over my orange bikini. My hair is tied in a high ponytail with ringlets around my face and I have very little make-up on. If I do go in the pool, I don’t want to come out with panda eyes.

I hear Martha calling me from downstairs.

I shout from my bedroom door. “Yes? What is it? I’m getting ready.”

“Tracey is here!” she calls back.

My stomach flips over. She came after all. I pause, feeling my pulse jump erratically in my wrist, then reach into my bedside table and pull out the bottle of vodka stashed in there. It’s nearly empty. A bottle of pills falls out onto the carpet and I pick them up, take a second to see they are the happy pills, the ones that make me feel light and floaty, and quickly neck a couple with a big swig of vodka.

I stash everything back where it was just as I hear her feet on the stairs.

Then she is standing in the door, looking as awkward and uncomfortable as I feel.

I don’t know what to say. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she replies.

“You came.”

“I said I would.”

I nod, look away.

She says, “I really like you, Helen. And I know you’re good friends with Eloise, which makes it difficult, but I would like to be friends.”

Warmth spreads through me. “I’d like that too! I know she’s a bitch and a bully. To be honest, we aren’t as close as we used to be. Yesterday was just… mad, really. So I can put some distance between me and her if that’s what you want. Anyway, in a few months we’ll all be off to uni and going our separate ways.”

“Tina is going to report Eloise at school.”

“Oh, right, yeah.”

She has an overnight bag over her shoulder and is still standing in the doorway. “So do you want to…?” I nod at the bedroom.

She smiles and comes towards me, gives me a fierce hug. “Let’s get this party started,” she whispers in my ear.

When she has changed into the red swimming costume and a peacock blue throw I put aside for her from my mother’s endless wardrobe, we wave to Martha and run down to the pool house. I have already stashed booze in the storeroom, which I drag out now by the box full.

“Wow! Do you think we’ll need this much?”

“Probably not, but better too much than too little, as my mother would say.” I don’t mention the bottle of pills I’ve stashed there too, along with some make-up for touch-ups later. All the essentials covered.