What did worry me, though, was what she might say. There had been a lot of water under the bridge since we’d been teenagers together in this small town, but people like Stacey held on to what they knew, guarding it jealously just in case it might come in useful. And now Poppy had crossed her daughter Cindy. I knew Stacey wouldn’t take that lying down. There’d be trouble here now. I knew it as well as I knew my own name.

But trouble was the last thing I needed. The way that Clio and then Marlon had wandered into my life had been totally haphazard, but now that they had, it felt vitally important to me to keep them there. Already I knew that things would be so much less fun without the pair of them around. I hadn’t thought that anything was missing from my world before, but now I realised that I’d just been going through the motions of life rather than living. Clio and Marlon were on the cusp of changing all that for me.

But Stacey could ruin everything. All she had to do was cause a scene here, bandy around a few accusations, scandals from my past, and I’d be sunk. There was no way that Clio would want to be my friend when she found out what I was really like, what I’d been part of. I knew I was nothing special, just a girl from a broken home in a rundown town with ideas above my station. Just by lifting a few stones I could pretty much guarantee that Stacey could make Clio and Marlon see that, too. I couldn’t let that happen, but I had no idea how to prevent it. I was just going to have to play things by ear and hope for the best.

This wasn’t Stacey’s first bar of the night, that much was obvious. Each movement had that exaggerated feel to it, as if she was having to concentrate hard on making her body do what she wanted. She was with another woman I didn’t recognise, but who had obviously crawled out of the same sewer as Stacey. Both were wearing skin-tight jeans slashed across the knees and ludicrously high heels that made them stoop as they walked. Their tops were barely more than handkerchiefs strapped across their chests. Stacey’s make-up had given up the ghost too, her mascara crusting in dark semi-circles under her eyes, and all that was left of her lipstick was a harsh red line drawn round the circumference of her lips. The contrast with Clio’s clean-cut style couldn’t have been more obvious if it had been created on a film set.

I dropped my head and picked up my almost-empty glass, hoping that Stacey wouldn’t spot me.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered Marlon, and I was grateful that he had the social awareness to lower his voice.