Savannah, Erin, Lainey and Yaz are sitting at a window table, cradling mugs of hot chocolate, their faces shadowed and anxious.
‘She had to have brain surgery,’ Yaz says, stirring her hot chocolate listlessly. ‘That’s really serious, right? My dad and her dad work together, and apparently Mr Beech said it was a life or death situation.’
‘I heard she was in a coma,’ Lainey chips in. ‘My mum met her gran at the shops this morning. Apparently Alice has been unconscious ever since the accident. She might lose her memory. Or have brain damage or something. So yeah, that’s pretty serious, I’d say.’
Erin frowns. ‘What if … what if she … well, doesn’t pull through?’
‘Shut up!’ Savvy snaps, slamming her mug down on the table. ‘She won’t die! She can’t! Don’t even say that!’
The girls are silent, eyeing Savvy warily. She doesn’t lose her cool often, but today she is visibly shaken. The shiny, smiley mask has slipped; her eyeliner and mascara have smudged, giving her panda eyes, but nobody dares mention it.
‘Oh God,’ Savvy wails. ‘I am in so much trouble. Mum and Dad are furious. I am grounded for a month, except that they can’t actually enforce it because they’re at work and it’s the Easter holidays. But still, it’s bad. And they are raging at Carina, which means she is raging at me. It’s all so, so unfair!’
‘It’s a nightmare,’ Yaz agrees.
‘You were only trying to be nice,’ Lainey tells Savvy. ‘You just wanted to include Alice; you weren’t to know what would happen.’
‘I wasn’t to know?’ Savvy echoes. ‘Lainey, there were four of us involved. Don’t try to lay all the blame at my door! You were the one who took it too far. I told you that was out of order! Don’t kid yourself – we’re all in this together.’
Lainey shifts, uncomfortable. ‘Well, obviously,’ she says. ‘And I know I got things a little bit wrong, but I didn’t mean Alice any harm. Nobody did! All I meant was … well, it was your idea.’
‘I knew it!’ Savvy howls. ‘You do blame me! Carina blames me, my parents blame me. I bet Alice’s parents blame me, too. The thing is, Lainey, yes, it was my idea to invite Alice over. Yes, it was my idea for us to dress up. Yes, it was even my idea to liven things up a bit, but not everything was my idea, OK? Not everything!’
Erin puts a hand on Savvy’s arm. ‘Nobody’s saying it was your fault,’ she says softly. ‘It was an accident! Just a stupid accident! Nobody was to blame!’
The four girls look at each other, then away again. Lainey starts chewing her nails, Erin fiddles with her iPhone, Yaz drops a sugar lump into her hot chocolate and stirs it noisily.
Savvy’s eyes brim with tears and she wipes them away savagely with the back of a hand, adding to the panda effect.
‘If nobody was to blame, how come we lied to the police?’ she asks.
Nobody can even begin to answer that.