I smiled as I closed my eyes, letting the sounds of the pool bar’s aggressive music wash over me, combined with the excitable splashing of kids in the pool. This whole holiday was about finding and betrothing ourselves to the two imaginary Julio twins. When we’d shopped for our bikinis in Topshop, we asked ourselves what the Julios would like. As we bought SunIn for our hair, it was to impress the Julios. And, after arriving at the hotel in Greece with my parents, with the stupendous independence of our very own hotel room, we dressed for the Julios—despite the fact there was not one teenage boy at this complex. Just families with kids, and couples who seemed really annoyed that kids were there, and old people who were annoyed anyone was there.

“What do you think they’re doing in Newquay now?” I asked, shuffling down to get the sun on my face. Jessica’s had turned a glorious gold within a day of arriving, whereas I’d turned into a giant freckle.

“Probably hiding in their shit caravans from the rain, and listening to the boys drone on about surfing after one whole lesson.”

I let the uncomfortable mixture of superiority and jealousy join the prickles on my burning skin. “You reckon?”

“Yeah. Also, it’s such a cliché. To go to Newquay after exams. Like, literally, the most obvious thing to do in the whole world. I bet they’ve all got matching T-shirts.”

“And no Julios.”

“Julio and Julio would rather die than go to Newquay.”

What I would never tell Jessica was that I’d been invited to go on the caravan holiday by Kim and Amy. They’d asked me over MSN in March, while we were having one of our secret chats that I also didn’t tell Jessica about. It went without saying she wasn’t welcome, and so, here was the alternative. My parents, utterly delighted that I was now well enough to do normal things like go on holiday, booked ten days at an all-inclusive resort, and I was allowed to bring a friend. Jessica “only” had to pay for the flights, which, when I told her, turned her mouth into a grim line. But she’d turned up at mine a week later, clasping a ball of twenty-pound notes, a grin splitting her face open, screaming, “WE ARE GOING TO GREECE, BABY.” I never asked how she got it—assuming, perhaps, she’d extricated the money from her father, cashing in on his sporadic feelings of guilt.