It was just a simple kiss goodbye. A very brief one. But a kiss, nevertheless. On the lips. While his lips were in the process of doing the half-amused smile.

It was perfect. The sort of kiss that you suddenly think about at odd moments, like when you’re brushing your teeth, or making toast, or in class, or breathing.

I think about it all week. Including while saying goodbye to Jenny as she heads for New York, and sitting through French, tingling, and meeting up again for ‘revision’ the following Friday afternoon, when he does it again.

I’m still thinking about it first thing on Saturday morning, when I wake up to the sound of the alarm. Except it isn’t the alarm. My alarm doesn’t go off on a Saturday morning. It takes me a moment to realise what the noise is. My phone, going off in my bag. And I think this must be the third or fourth time it’s rung, because I’m pretty sure I’ve been dreaming through the ringing for a while.

Usually he texts. Why is he calling this time? Does he need to make another kiss-rendezvous? And why is he so desperate? I mean, it was good, but this is a bit extreme.

I check the screen, but it isn’t Liam calling after all. It’s Edie. Outside, it’s still dark.

‘Hello?’ I say groggily.

‘Oh, Nonie,’ she says. ‘Thank God. You’ve got to come over. Please. I need someone to help me. My parents are at this Scout thing with my brother. Can you come?’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘It’s Gloria.’

‘Gloria?’

‘Yes. I’m at Jenny’s flat. The ambulance is on the way. Please come soon.’

Oh my God.

I leap into my clothes as fast as I possibly can, pausing only when I realise that my jumper’s on back to front and I have boob-mounds sticking out of my back. I don’t waste time on the laces for my Doc Martens, which is why I end up falling, very loudly, down the stairs outside Harry’s room.

As I’m picking myself up, his door opens. He looks at me, bleary-eyed.

‘Hi!’ I say, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were home.’

‘Got in last night,’ he mutters. ‘Late.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Four hours ago, in fact. What’s going on?’

‘It’s Edie,’ I explain. I tell him about Gloria and the ambulance. His face clouds over.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he says. ‘I can drive you in Mum’s car. Give me a moment.’

Two minutes later, he’s back, dressed in jeans and a slouchy cardigan over the tee-shirt he slept in. We race to the car together and are at Jenny’s flat in record time. Seeing the ambulance outside, with its lights flashing, makes the whole thing seem suddenly more real, and frightening.

The door to the flat is half open. Harry and I step cautiously inside. At first, the place seems eerily quiet, but then we hear shuffling noises coming from Gloria’s room. I’m about to go in, when Harry puts an arm on my shoulder and stops me. Instead, he pops his head round the door, to see if everything’s OK.

Instantly, Edie comes rushing out and into my arms. She doesn’t say anything. Just hugs me. Moments later, a paramedic in green overalls comes out and motions us out of the way. They bring Gloria out on a stretcher. At least, I assume it’s Gloria. The face, eyes closed, looks like it belongs to a woman thirty years older than the Gloria I knew, and half her weight. Straggly hair lies limp against her cheek.

‘Is she . . . ?’ I whisper.

Edie shakes her head. ‘I thought so. That’s why I called you. But they found a pulse. Look, I’d better go with them.’

She’s anxious and distracted. She heads off after the paramedics, but they tell her to go home and get some rest. Everything’s under control. She tries to insist on going in the ambulance, but they won’t let her.

‘Look, love, there’s nothing more you can do. We’ll look after her. Best if you leave us to it.’

They carefully manoevre the stretcher down the stairs. Edie looks so panic-stricken that Harry says, ‘Why don’t Nonie and I drive you to the hospital? Then you can check she’s OK. And we can drive you home.’

Slowly the panic starts to fade from Edie’s face.

‘Are you sure? Don’t you have loads to do?’

‘Nothing more important than this,’ Harry assures her.

We head quickly for the car and make it to the hospital not long after the ambulance. Then comes the long wait, in various different queues, until we find out where they’ve taken Gloria and how she is. Slumped in a chair in a badly lit waiting room with a hot cup of tea, Edie explains what happened.

‘The phone rang last night. It was this weird call. Nobody said anything. Just breathing. And I messed up finding the number. Then I woke up in the night and I realised – it must have been Gloria. I dashed over to the flat, but it was too late. There were pills and bottles everywhere. She was lying in the bed and she’d been sick. I don’t know when she took them, but by the time I got there she wasn’t moving. I tried to wake her but I couldn’t. I thought . . . I thought . . .’

I put my arm around her. Harry gently takes her tea off her and holds her little hand in his big one. She cries quietly, but for a long time, her body shaking with the sobs. We sit with her until she feels a bit better, and then some more, until a male nurse eventually comes over and asks us to follow him. By this time, I have flicked through more celebrity magazines than I’ve previously read in a lifetime and know about every diet and every broken marriage in the history of Hollywood. I also know it will be a while before I drink hot tea from a vending machine again.

‘She’s over there,’ the nurse says. He points us in the direction of a large ward with several beds in it. Gloria is in the furthest one, screened by some inappropriately cheerful yellow curtains. Her eyes are still closed but her face looks slightly less grey. There’s a drip in her arm and wires attaching her to a monitor that’s busy flashing meaningless numbers.

The nurse has already gone. After staring at Gloria for a while, we find some female nurses sitting round a table at the entrance to the ward, chatting. Harry goes over to them. Instantly, they all look up, stop talking and flash broad smiles. The Harry effect. Even when he’s wearing last night’s tee-shirt and hasn’t brushed his teeth. I don’t know how he does it, but I wish he’d give some of it to me.

After a couple of minutes of questions from Harry and adoring gazes from the nurses, he comes back over to Edie and me.

‘She’s stable. The fact that she was sick saved her. That and you getting there, Edie. She’ll be OK, but it’ll take time.’

He hesitates. There’s something else, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to tell us.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘Whatever it is – I think we should know.’

At first he shakes his head, but Edie and I as combined forces are hard to resist. Eventually he gives in.

‘They said that in this sort of case she’s likely to try again. We need to keep an eye on her.’

‘Oh!’

There’s a gasp from Edie. I wonder if she’s going to cry again, but she doesn’t. Instead, she bites her lip and goes very still. I put my arm around her and help her back to the car. I’m so glad we’ve got Harry with us to worry about all the practical stuff like paying for parking and negotiating a way through the busy London traffic.

We take Edie back to her house. We’re expecting it to be empty, but to our surprise, her whole family is there. In the hall, her mum folds Edie into her arms and starts crying.

‘Thank God you’re safe, darling,’ she says. ‘We’ve been so worried. I tried calling you the minute I got your message. We came back straight away, but we didn’t know where you were or how to find you.’

She looks up at Harry and me.

‘I can’t thank you both enough. You must be exhausted. Come and have a cup of tea.’

We all troop into Edie’s kitchen, where her mum bustles around making drinks for everyone. I don’t think I can face another cup of tea right now, until one’s put in front of me with a big spoonful of sugar in it. I don’t normally have sugar in tea, but the sweetness turns out to be just what I need. And Edie’s mum’s right. I do suddenly feel exhausted. Even though I’ve spent most of the last few hours just sitting around waiting for things to happen in the hospital, it’s been more tiring than I realised.

‘What happened?’ Edie’s brother Jake asks. His eyes are wide. ‘Did she die, that lady?’

Harry smiles gently. ‘No, she didn’t. She’s going to be fine, actually. Your sister’s a real hero.’

I don’t even need to look at Edie. I know how pink her cheeks will be. She’s got her head down anyway, hiding her face with her fringe while she checks her phone for all the texts and messages she’s missed from home while we were at the hospital.

‘Sorry about the Scout thing,’ I say to Jake. ‘Did you miss much of it?’

‘Most of it,’ he shrugs. ‘But we wanted to check Edie was OK. Mum said Edie sounded really upset in her message. And then Mum started crying. And Dad looked really upset too. And I didn’t really feel like doing scouts anyway after that.’

‘Oh, Jake,’ his mum says, looking mortified.

Harry and I catch each other’s eye. He has the ghost of a smile, but he’s trying to hide it. I guess he’s touched, like I am, by the way Edie’s family sticks together in a crisis. How kind they all are. How easily her mum gets embarrassed. They’re not like our family at all, but they’re great.

‘Well, I’d better be going,’ Harry says eventually. ‘There’s this thing I was supposed to be at . . .’

Edie glances up from under her fringe and puts her phone on the table.

‘Er, thanks,’ she says. ‘For everything, Harry. Thanks very much.’

She stands up. Harry goes round to say goodbye. She sticks her hand out to shake his, but he’s already leaning in for a quick hug, so she gets him in the stomach with her pointy fingers. Harry laughs and gives her a very formal handshake and a bow. She looks just as mortified as her mum did earlier.

On the sofa later, watching old episodes of Glee with Edie and Jake, I can’t help wondering about our families. I can’t possibly imagine Mum dropping everything to come and rescue me from some emergency. But on the other hand, we’re natural huggers.

And thinking about hugging reminds me of kissing. Which naturally leads me to thoughts about Liam. I get my phone out and stare at it. Do I dare text him? Lately, we’ve only texted about practical stuff like meeting arrangements. Is it a bit too much for a girl to text a boy when she wants to talk about something terrible that’s just happened? Will he think I’m getting serious, and go off me instantly?

I decide I’ll have to risk it, but keep it as light and vague as possible. I think about what to say for a full episode of Glee, going through the various options until I finally come up with: ‘Are you around?’

I wait. And wait. And no text comes back. Greeaat.

Then, just as I’m about to leave Edie’s and go back home, something comes through.

‘Sorry babe. Working for my dad today. Hope you’re ok. Miss you x’

I keep staring. It’s hardly Shakespeare. But it uses the words ‘babe’, and ‘miss you’ and ‘x’. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a Jane Austen novel – with a happy ending. Despite the day, and the memory of Gloria’s grey face on the stretcher, it fills me with a warm glow that starts in my tummy and spreads out to my earlobes.

‘Are you sure you’re OK to go home now?’ Edie’s mum asks, checking me for signs of stress. But suddenly, they’ve gone.

‘I’m fine,’ I assure her, truthfully. ‘Absolutely fine.’