‘And what did he say? Is he going to meet you?’ she asks, after ten minutes of serious silence.

‘He hasn’t replied yet. Maybe he’s busy?’

‘I thought you said he texts you every day?’ she snaps.

‘He does usually. He used to, anyway. Maybe he’s lost his phone or something. That’s why I emailed him as well.’

‘Uh huh,’ she grunts, sounding less than convinced, which puts me on edge. I check my phone again to see if there’s anything from him. No.

‘Maybe you’ve scared him off? Been a bit stalker-ish with all the texts and emails?’ She says what I can’t, what I don’t want to face.

‘He started the whole thing. He asked to meet up first!’ I’ve had enough of the heart to heart. The last thing I need to hear is that I might have sent Riley running.

‘Don’t snap at me, don’t you dare snap at me. Everyone knows long-distance relationships don’t work. I’ve tried to tell you that,’ Callie lectures.

‘Have you had one – a long-distance relationship? How do you know?’ Callie doesn’t do relationships. She’s focusing on her career first and isn’t going to waste her time on small-town boys.

‘No, but…’ She pulls her ‘trust me I know what I’m doing’ face.

I sigh. If he doesn’t want to meet, I’m not going to have a breakdown, and I can see that’s what she’s worried about, now she knows. I knew this would happen once I told her about PMDD. She’s looking at me like I’ve got a special snowflake label stuck on my forehead. I’m different from her now. This is why I held off from telling her. This is why I’ll now be Hope but with added PMDD and any little thing that goes wrong will now be linked to this. Even if she doesn’t say it out loud, she’ll be thinking it. I feel betrayed.

‘And even if you do meet, what then? He’ll break your heart. He sounds like a right tart from what you’ve told me!’ she carries on. I immediately regret showing her any of his flirty messages. ‘I mean, do you really want your sexual debut to be with someone like this?’ I wince at the phrase sexual debut and wish she wasn’t quite so theatre about it all.

‘I don’t see what the big deal is; felt like the next step to me,’ I huff.

‘Stop being so naïve, Hope. Listen to this… “Hi Mum and Nonno, on the way back from Dublin I met this boy who stopped me from… I don’t know what? Jumping overboard because I didn’t get in to drama college?”’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I wasn’t going to jump overboard!’ I wish I’d never told her. ‘I was standing on the rail because, because I just wanted to get away from myself. And he made me wobble by grabbing my jacket. I was fine until he came along!’

She’s not listening. ‘Oh and here’s the kicker: I’ve also got PMDT which controls my moods and makes me do irrational things like climbing up safety rails on ferries to scream at the sea.’ She pauses to leave me with that image. ‘Anyway, back to the strange man-child on the ferry who smokes dope. Well, he gave me his number, except he secretly hacked into my email account and since then we’ve been messaging, chatting and generally having great big sexy relations under your nose.’

‘We haven’t been having sexy relations. We haven’t been having sexy anything, Callie!’

It’s no good. She’s raging.

‘It’s alright if I go and meet him on my own and not tell anyone where I’m going, isn’t it? We’re just gonna find a hotel room somewhere and Netflix and chill?’

‘No one even mentioned a hotel room, stop being so ridiculous.’ I have visions of Mum thundering up the stairs to see what’s going on.

‘Oh and, before I go off to meet this potential paedophile who I’ve met all of once, we’d better revisit the PMMT thingy, which is an illness which makes me really angry and aggressive and behave in a way I’d never normally. REPEAT it makes me behave in a way that I would NEVER normally.’ Callie is on her feet now, doing a scarily good impression of me.

She turns round and looks at me with an expression I don’t recognise, then asks, ‘Who are you?’ which crushes me.

When I don’t answer she yells, ‘And you can keep your pathetic Hope Chest!’ She storms out of my room.

‘Come back, Callie?’ I plead but it’s too late. She’s stomping down the stairs. For a hideous second I think she’s going to tell Mum and Nonno. A tiny part of me wishes she would, just to get it over in one go, then they can all hate me together. I feel sick as I hover on the landing, listening to her lying to them, saying that she’s feeling unwell and would Mum mind driving her home? Nonno says something quietly to her and she answers. I can’t hear them properly. Maybe Callie’s asking Nonno to take her to the RSC.

There’s no point going down there to try and talk her out of leaving, so I go back into my room. I sit on my bed and think about her last question. Her words wound, just as they were meant to. She doesn’t get it. I just know nothing bad will happen to me if I meet Riley. I can’t explain it to her because I can hear how dodgy it sounds, how dangerous. I think I’d know if he was someone to be scared of. But if she’d suggested the same thing, I’d absolutely tell her not to do it. We’ve had enough lectures at school and college on internet safety and grooming, but this isn’t what’s been going on between Riley and me. We have met! He isn’t a stranger luring me in. He isn’t an older man pretending to be a young boy and he isn’t an axe murderer after my blood. The truth is he’s barely interested in me at all. The scariest thing about him is the fact that I sent that email days ago and he still hasn’t replied.