Pictures of Lily by Paige Toon

get along with her? What’s her name again?’
    ‘Lorraine. She’s okay. She’s pretty nice, in fact.’
    ‘Just not nice enough to live with.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You didn’t consider living with your dad and Lorraine instead of with your mum?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ I reply. ‘I would have gone to live with them instead of coming here if they’d had enough room for me.’
    ‘Are you serious?’ He stares at me in surprise. I nod. ‘Blimey,’ he comments. ‘Would you go back to the UK now if you could?'
    I cock my head to one side and think about this for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ I answer eventually. ‘You’ll have to ask me again when I start school. I’m dreading it,’ I admit.
    ‘I don’t want to sound unoriginal and tell you it will be okay,’ he says, ‘but it probably will.’
    I roll my eyes at him.
    ‘It will! Look at how quickly you settled into work. You’re obviously good at meeting people and making friends.’
    At that comment I can’t help but let out a sharp laugh.
    ‘You did settle into work well,’ he says, perplexed at my reaction.
    ‘It’s not that,’ I reply. ‘It was the bit about making friends.’
    ‘What? Don’t you have mates back home?’
    I stare down at my fingernails. ‘Not any more.’
    ‘Why?’
    I let out a deep breath and shift the koala into a more comfortable position on my lap, because this is a long story and I finally feel brave enough to tell it.
    I didn’t have many friends back in the UK. Because we moved around a lot, the friendships I made growing up were never close. But after Bill in Brighton – that was one of my mum’s many men – we moved back to London, and that’s where we’ve been for the last four years: the longest time I’ve been anywhere.
    I started secondary school along with everyone else, so for once I wasn’t The New Girl. We were all new. And that was when I met Shannon. I still don’t know why she latched onto me. She was the pretty, blonde, vivacious one whom all the boys fancied, and for some reason she picked me to be her little pet. Not that it felt like that at the time. I felt as if the sun was shining on me for the first time in my life. I adored her. And it seemed as if the feeling was reciprocated. We did everything together. We were inseparable at school, and in the evenings and weekends it was no different. No one else got a look-in. Until we became interested in boys, that is, but instead of that causing a rift between us, it just gave us one more thing to gossip about.
    Shannon got her first serious boyfriend before me, but soon set about hooking me up with his best mate. I fancied Dan instantly. In fact, to this day I don’t know why Shannon went for Eddie over him. Dan was the better-looking of the two: tall, dark and very, very handsome. Shannon lost her virginity to Eddie within three months and then encouraged me to do the same. I didn’t take much persuading, if I’m being honest. I was in love. Plus I fancied him like mad. We were only fifteen.
    That was five months ago. Two months ago I went to the bathroom at a house party and discovered Dan screwing Shannon over the toilet seat. I didn’t wait to see if he’d been wearing a condom.
    I don’t go into all this detail when I relay the story to Ben, but he’s still pretty horrified.
    ‘What did they say when you confronted them?’ he asks.
    ‘I didn’t. I felt too sick about it to go back to school on the Monday and by the time my mum made me return on Wednesday, everybody seemed to know what had happened. I don’t know how, because I certainly didn’t say anything.’ I pause. ‘Shannon never even apologised.’
    ‘What a bitch!’ he spits. ‘What was she like around you? Did she seem guilty?’
    ‘Yes, at first. She wouldn’t look at me. Then she latched onto another group of girls and I was out in the cold.’
    ‘What about your boyfriend?’
    ‘Eddie punched him in the face so he had a black eye for most of that