Lainey is sitting on a park bench; she is balancing on the backrest with her feet on the seat, drinking a Coke and huddling into her jacket. Yaz is lying back on the bench, staring up at the starless sky. The March days are cold and crisp and bright, but the nights are downright arctic.
Yaz thinks that if she has to stay on this bench for much longer she might just freeze to death and be found there in the morning, frozen solid, her hair and eyelashes dusted with icing sugar frost.
‘Savvy’s losing it,’ Lainey says, taking a swig of Coke and handing the can down to Yaz. ‘She’s cracking up. If we’re not careful, she’ll blab something to her parents and then we’ll all be in trouble. Or, worse, she’ll try to blame it all on me; she’s thinking that way, I know she is!’
‘No way,’ Yaz says, reassuring. ‘Maybe you lost your temper with Alice a little bit, but …’
‘Seriously, Yaz, you too?’ Lainey growls. ‘Look, OK, I was upset with her, but I didn’t want her to fall. It wasn’t my fault!’
‘Of course it wasn’t!’ Yaz agrees. ‘I know that, and Savvy knows that. We all do. If anything, Savvy feels responsible. The sleepover was at her house, and it was her idea to invite Alice.’
‘Great idea that turned out to be,’ Lainey says.
‘Savvy wasn’t to know what would happen,’ Yaz points out. ‘Nobody could have known.’
Lainey drains the last of the Coke and scrunches the can up before throwing it through the air; it misses the bin and clatters away into the darkness.
‘Let’s be honest,’ Lainey says. ‘What we did to Alice was mean. Some people might say it was bullying. I might have said some things I shouldn’t have …’
Yaz stands up abruptly, tugging down the sleeves of her coat, fishing in her pocket for chewing gum. ‘It’s pointless going over all that,’ she says. ‘You were upset. We’ll stick together and nobody needs to know exactly what happened …’
‘Unless Savvy blabs,’ the other girl scowls.
‘She won’t,’ Yaz says. ‘It was an accident, like I said. Maybe we haven’t always been as nice as we could have been to Alice, but she never seemed to get the message, did she? Always looking at us with those sad eyes, moping around by herself, trying to make us feel guilty. The thing is, not all friendships are forever. Alice couldn’t seem to see that.’
‘She sort of asked for it,’ Lainey admits. ‘Hanging around us, trying to find things to chat about, like the last two years just didn’t even happen …’
‘Why did we fall out?’ Yaz asks, frowning. ‘I can’t even remember. It was something to do with her being in the play, right? It was all she could talk about for a while. And then she got picked for that summer drama school …’
Lainey jumps down from the bench and the two girls begin walking towards the park gates, heading for the bus stop.
‘Alice was a pain,’ Lainey says. ‘Back then, anyway. She always had to be the centre of attention. She thought she was better than us.’
‘Maybe we were just jealous,’ Yaz suggests. ‘I know I was pretty insecure back then. I remember feeling hurt that Alice got picked for the play, and then picked again for the summer school. I felt like she was rubbing my face in it.’
‘I wasn’t jealous,’ Lainey says. ‘I just never understood what people saw in Alice Beech. She was so … mousey. Dull. I think we just grew out of being friends. We moved on, she didn’t. It happens.’
The girls arrive at the bus stop and huddle together in a pool of light from the street lamp, waiting.
‘It’s a mess,’ Lainey says. ‘I wish Savvy hadn’t asked her to the sleepover.’
Yaz sighs. ‘Me too. It wasn’t our best idea. We used her, and it backfired on us big time. It was just supposed to be a bit of fun. Alice totally overreacted. If she hadn’t got so upset, the accident would never have happened.’
‘It wasn’t our fault,’ Lainey repeats, as if saying this often enough will make it true. ‘We just have to keep our cool, stick to our stories. And Savvy needs to chill and get a grip.’