I know I can do it. I’ve spent hours sweeping up hair and watching my mother at work in our dining room, absorbing the way she holds the scissors, the feathering and layering, the thinning and over-direction. Shannon is my oldest and dearest friend, a sister in everything but name. Sadness rises from her and I want to blow it away, to lift the shadows from behind her eyes, because I love her – I can’t imagine ever not loving her – but mostly, I want her to be happy again.

‘I don’t suppose you can make it any worse.’

I gather a hank of white-blonde hair between my fingers, say a little prayer and cut. The scissors are blunt but workable. Sara is watching, her mouth hanging open a little, but this requires my full concentration, and so I don’t look at her again, or think about Maureen Connolly, or my mother, but instead picture all the models in my magazines, the pop stars and actresses, and I snip and snip and snip.

When I’ve finished, there’s a pile of hair on the carpet.

I’m almost too scared to look up.

But Shannon is staring at herself in the mirror, and there’s a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

It’s not perfect, of course it isn’t. I’m twelve and the only hair I’ve cut before is synthetic and belongs to my dolls, and it’s not as tidy as I’d like, or as sharp-edged as when my mother does it, but Shannon’s eyes look much bigger and the cut exposes the definition of her jawbone and the pale skin on the long sweep of her neck. She looks different – older, more elegant.

‘Wow,’ says Sara, and I know exactly what she means.

Shannon places her hand on the nape of her neck. She shakes her head two or three times, as if it feels unexpectedly light. Then she gets up from the stool and puts her arms around me.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

The morning creeps into afternoon. We lie on our stomachs on Shannon’s carpet, and we talk and talk. About Maureen Connolly and disgusting fish pie. About my urge to run and keep running. She tells me what happened at ballet and I offer up words of comfort, but we know that Monday morning will be awful for both of us.

Because I’m friends with Shannon, the girls at school are cruel to me too. Is your mum dead yet? You’re so ugly you should kill yourself. Why do you always wear such terrible clothes?

Neither of us mentions our parents.

‘I wonder what Kit will think of your hair,’ I say, changing the subject. This is safer ground. Shannon likes talking about Kit.

‘Doesn’t matter now.’ She blows on her nails, freshly painted in black varnish. ‘I’m not allowed to go.’