Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

About the Author

Also by Jacqueline Wilson

Praise

Copyright

About the Book

Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were tiny. They’ve always played together and called each other boyfriend and girlfriend. They even have a magical fantasy world that belongs to them alone.

But as they become teenagers, things begin to change. Carl has a new friend, Paul, who is taking all his attention. Sylvie can tell his feelings have changed. But can she guess at the true reasons behind it all?

A moving and delicately handled treatment of first love and first heartbreak from the best-selling, award-winning Jacqueline Wilson.

FOR TEENAGE READERS

About the Author

Jacqueline Wilson is an extremely well-known and hugely popular author who served as Children’s Laureate from 2005-7. She has been awarded a number of prestigious awards, including the British Children’s Book of the Year and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award (for The Illustrated Mum), the Smarties Prize and the Children’s Book Award (for Double Act, for which she was also highly commended for the Carnegie Medal). In 2002 Jacqueline was given an OBE for services to literacy in schools and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame. She has sold over thirty-five million books and was the author most borrowed from British libraries in the last decade.

To Vicky Ireland

I HATED LUNCH times. I always missed Carl so much.

When we were in middle school we spent all our time together. We’d rush off the moment the bell went, shovel down our school dinners in ten minutes flat, and then we’d have a whole hour just being us. We’d sneak off to one of our special favourite places. When it was sunny we’d sprawl by the sandpit or sit kicking our legs on the wall near the bike sheds. We’d lurk in the library most of the winter. It didn’t really matter where we were, just so long as we were together.

Some days we didn’t talk much; we just read our books, chuckling or commenting every now and then. Sometimes we drew together or played silly paper games. But most days we’d invent another episode of Glassworld. We’d act it out, though we couldn’t do it properly at school the way we could inside the Glass Hut. The other kids thought us weird enough as it was. If they came across us declaring undying love as King Carlo and Queen Sylviana they’d fall about laughing. We’d mutter under our breath and make minute gestures and the magic would start working and we’d be whirled off to the glitter of Glassworld.

It was always a shock when the bell rang for afternoon school, shattering our crystal crowns and glass boots. We trudged back along the pizza-smelling corridors in our shabby trainers, wishing we could stay in Glassworld for ever.

I still kept the Glassworld Chronicles up to date in our huge manuscript book, and Carl occasionally added notes or an illustration, but we didn’t often act it out nowadays. Carl always had so much boring homework. Sometimes he didn’t come to the Glass Hut for days and I’d have to go calling for him.

It didn’t always work then. He’d follow me down through the garden and sit in the hut with me, but he’d be all quiet and moody and not contribute anything, or he’d be silly and mess around and say his speeches in stupid voices, sending it all up. I could generally get him to play properly eventually, but it was very hard work.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t keep pestering Carl to play with you,’ said Mum.

‘But he’s my best friend in all the world. We always play together,’ I said.

‘Oh, Sylvie,’ said Mum. She sighed. Nowadays she often sighed when she talked to me. ‘You’re too old for this playing lark now, making up all these secret imaginary games. It’s not normal. You’re thirteen, for God’s sake. When are you going to start acting like a teenager?’

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ I said loftily. ‘They’re not little kids’ games. We’re writing our own series of books. You wait. They’ll be published one day and Carl and I will make millions, what with all the royalties and the foreign rights and the film deals.’

‘Oh well, you can maybe pay off the mortgage then,’ said Mum. She sighed again. ‘Who do you think you are, eh? J. K. Rowling? Anyway, Carl doesn’t seem quite so keen on this playing – sorry, writing lark nowadays. You’re both growing up. Maybe it’s time to make a few new friends. Isn’t there anyone you can make friends with at school?’

‘I’ve got heaps of friends,’ I lied. ‘I’ve got Lucy. She’s my friend.’

That was true enough. Lucy and I had made friends that worrying first day in Milstead High School. I’d known her in first school and middle school, but I hadn’t ever needed to make a proper best friend of any of the girls because I’d always had Carl.

It was hard trying to make friends now in Year Nine. Nearly everyone had been at our middle school so they just carried on in the same twosomes or little gangs. There were several new girls in our form, but they palled up together. There was also Miranda Holbein in the other Year Nine form, but she was way out of my league.

It was a great relief when Lucy asked if I’d sit next to her and acted friendly. She was a giggly girl with very pink cheeks, as if she was permanently embarrassed. She sang in the choir and was always very good. She had pageboy hair and always had a shining white school shirt and never hitched up her knee-length skirt and wore polished brown lace-up shoes. She looked almost as babyish as I did. So we sat next to each other in every lesson and shared chocolates and crisps at break. We chatted about ordinary humdrum things like television programmes (she liked anything to do with hospitals and wanted to be a nurse when she grew up) and pop stars (she loved several members of boy bands in a devoted little-sisterly fashion, knowing off by heart their birth signs and favourite food and every single number one on their albums, in order).

Lucy was fine for an everyday friend. I would never ever count her as my best friend, of course. She lived just round the corner from school so she went home at lunch time. I lived too far away. Anyway, my mum was busy working at the building society, not home to cook me egg and chips like Lucy’s mum. I was stuck for company each lunch time. We weren’t allowed mobile phones at school but I mentally sent Carl text messages: I MISS U. TALK 2 ME. C U IN G H 2NITE?

We used to pretend we were so in tune with each other we were telepathic. Maybe our psychic brainwaves weren’t wired up for new technology. Nothing went ching-ching in Carl’s head. If he ever tried to send me similar messages I didn’t pick them up, though I waited tensely enough, eager and alert.

I asked Carl over and over what he did during his lunch times at Kingsmere Grammar but he was unusually uncommunicative. He ate. He read.

‘Oh, come on, Carl. Tell me everything,’ I said. ‘Elaborate. I want detail.’

‘OK. You want me to describe my visit to the boys’ toilet in elaborate detail?’

‘Stop being so irritating. You know what I mean. Who do you talk to? What do you do? What do you think about?’

‘Maybe you’d like to follow me around with a webcam,’ said Carl. He suddenly grinned, and switched to manic TV-presenter mode. ‘Here is our unwitting suspect, Carl Johnson. Let’s hone in on him. Ah! What is he up to now? He’s lifting a finger. Has he spotted us? Is he about to remonstrate? No, he’s picking his nose. Let’s have a close-up of the bogey, guys.’

‘Yuck!’

‘Oh, Carl’s close friend Sylvie is making a pithy comment. Let’s focus on little Sylvie. Smile at the camera, babe,’ he said, sticking his squared fingers right in front of my face.

I stuck my tongue out.

‘Keep it out, keep it out, that’s the girl! We’re now switching to our all-time favourite Live Op Channel. Ms Sylvie West has suffered all her childhood from Sharp Tongue Syndrome but the eminent ear, nose and throat specialist, Mr Carl Johnson, is about to operate. Scissors please, nurse!’

‘Yes, here are the scissors,’ I said, snip-snapping my fingers. ‘But we’ve switched to the Mystery Channel now and I’m playing a scary girl driven bonkers by her mad best friend so she decides to – stab – him – to – death!’

I made my scissor fingers strike Carl’s chest while he shrieked and staggered and fell flat at my feet, miming a bloody death. He did it so well that I could almost see a pool of scarlet blood.

I bent over him. He lay very still, eyes half open but staring past me, unblinking.

‘Carl? Carl!’ I said, giving his shoulder a little shake.

He didn’t stir. My heart started beating faster. I crept closer, hanging my head down until my long hair tickled his cheeks. He didn’t flinch. I listened. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

‘Stop it, Carl, you’re frightening me!’ I said.

He suddenly sat bolt upright so that our heads bumped together. I screamed.

‘Ah, I’m glad I’m frightening you because we’ve switched to the Horror Channel now and I am a ghost come back to haunt you. Be very afraid, Sylvie West, because I am going to get you!’

His hands clutched my neck but I wrestled with him. I was small and skinny but I could fight like a wildcat when I wanted. We tussled a bit but then Carl’s fingers started tickling my neck. I creased up laughing and then tickled him in turn. We lay flat on our backs for a long time, giggling feebly. Then Carl reached out and held my hand in the special best-friendship clasp we’d invented way back when we were seven. I held his hand tight and knew that we were best friends for ever. More than best friends. We’d played weddings together when we were little. Carl used to make me rings out of sweet wrappers. Maybe he’d give me a real ring one day.

How could I ever compare my bland little conversations with Lucy to the glorious fun I always had with Carl?

There weren’t really any other girls to go round with at lunch time. I got on with nearly everyone, but I didn’t want to foist myself upon them. One time when I was sitting in the library Miranda Holbein sauntered in and waved her fingers at me. I was so startled I looked round, convinced she must be waving to someone behind me.

‘I’m waving at you, silly!’ said Miranda.

I waggled my fingers back foolishly and then gathered up my books and rushed for the door. I didn’t want to annoy Miranda. We’d only been at the school a few weeks but she already had a serious reputation. She could make mincemeat of you if she didn’t like your looks.

I didn’t like my looks. I was so tiny people couldn’t believe I was in Year Nine at high school. I looked the youngest of all the girls in my class. They all called me Little Titch. I didn’t exactly get teased. I was looked on as the class mascot – quite cute, but not to be taken seriously.

Everyone was in total awe of Miranda. She looked much older than me, much older than any of us. She seemed at least sixteen, even in her bottle-green school uniform. She had bright magenta-red hair, obviously dyed, though this was strictly against school rules. She cheerily lied to Miss Michaels, swearing that every startling strand of hair was natural. It swung down past her pointed chin but she often plaited it in little rows, fastening each end with tiny beads and ribbons.

When her form teacher complained about their gaudiness she came to school the next day with green beads and ribbons to match our uniform. This was preposterous, but Miss Michaels let her get away with it!

Miranda seemed born to break every rule going. She was the girl everyone longed to look like but she wasn’t really pretty and she wasn’t even ultra-slim. She didn’t seem to mind a bit that she was a little too curvy. In fact she seemed particularly pleased with herself, often standing with her hands on her hips, showing off her figure. The girls in her form said she never hid under her towel after showers. Apparently she stood there boldly, totally bare, not caring who stared at her.

She was clever and could come top in class if she bothered to work hard, but she generally messed around and forgot to do her homework. She knew all sorts of stuff and apparently chatted away to the teachers about painting or opera or architecture, but no one ever teased her for being a swot. She didn’t even get teased for being posh, though she spoke in this deep fruity voice that would normally have been cruelly mimicked. It helped that she swore a great deal, not always totally out of earshot of the teachers. She told extraordinary anecdotes about the things she did with her boyfriends. She was nearly always surrounded by squealing girls going ‘Oh, Miranda!’

I wandered into the girls’ toilets this lunch time and there was a huddle of girls goggling at Miranda. She was perched precariously on one of the wash basins, swinging her legs, her feet in extraordinary buckled boots with long pointy toes.

She was in the middle of a very graphic description of what she had done with her boyfriend last night. I stopped, blushing furiously. The other girls giggled and nudged Miranda, who hadn’t paused.

‘Shut up, Miranda. Look, there’s the Titch.’

‘Hi, Titch,’ said Miranda, giving me a wave again. Her fingernails were bitten but she’d painted each sliver of nail black, and inked artistic black roses inside each wrist. Then she carried on with her detailed account.

‘Miranda! Stop it! The Titch has gone scarlet.’

Miranda smiled. ‘Perhaps it’s time she learned the facts of life,’ she said. ‘OK, Titch? Shall I enlighten you?’

‘I know the facts of life, thanks,’ I said.

I was starting to want to go to the loo rather badly now but I didn’t want to go into a cubicle with them all listening to me.

‘Ah, you might have a sketchy knowledge of the basic facts, but I doubt you’ve put them into practice,’ said Miranda.

‘Stop teasing the Titch, Miranda!’

‘As if the Titch would ever have a boyfriend,’ said Miranda, rolling her eyes at them.

‘I do so have a boyfriend,’ I said, stung. ‘You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know anything about me.’

The girls tensed excitedly. People didn’t usually snap back at Miranda. I was astonished I’d done it myself.

Miranda didn’t seem at all annoyed. ‘I want to know all about you,’ she said. ‘And your boyfriend. Tell me all about him.’

‘He’s called Carl,’ I said.

‘And?’ said Miranda. ‘Come on, Titch. What does he look like?’

‘He’s very good looking. Everyone says so, not just me. He’s fair. His hair’s lovely, very blond and straight. It flops over his forehead when it needs cutting. He’s got brown eyes and he’s got lovely skin, very clear – he never gets spots. He’s not very tall but he’s still quite a bit taller than me, obviously. He doesn’t bother much with his clothes and yet he always looks just right, kind of cool and relaxed.’

‘Wow!’ said Miranda. She was sort of sending me up, and yet she seemed interested too. ‘So what’s he like as a person? I find all the really fit-looking guys are either terribly vain or they’ve got this total personality bypass.’

‘No, Carl’s not a bit like that. He’s ever so funny and great at making stuff up and inventing things. He’s very clever, much brainier than me. He knows just about everything. He’ll go on and on about some subject he’s truly interested in but he’s never really boring.’

‘So how long have you known this boy wonder?’ Miranda asked. ‘Or do you really know him? You’re the girl who reads a lot. Maybe you’re making up your own story now.’

‘Yeah, like, as if a boy like that would want to hang out with the Titch!’ said Alison, another new girl.

‘She does know him,’ said Patty Price. ‘We were all in the same class in middle school.’

‘So he’s only our age,’ said Miranda. ‘Just a little boy. I never go out with boys my own age, they’re so stupid and immature.’

‘Carl isn’t stupid,’ I said.

‘No, he’s, like, ultra-brainy,’ said Patty. ‘He goes to Kingsmere Grammar now, doesn’t he, Titch? He got a special scholarship. He’s great at art too. He painted one wall back in middle school – this Venice scene with glass-blowers, and it was just like a real artist had done it.’

‘He sounds interesting,’ said Miranda. ‘I want to meet him. Hey, Titch, bring him round to my place tonight.’

I stared at her. She was surely joking! All the other girls seemed equally amazed.

‘Yeah, right,’ I said.

‘No, really. We’ll have a party, it’ll be great,’ said Miranda.

‘Oh, can I come, Miranda?’

‘Can I?’

‘I’m coming too!’

‘Hey, hey, I’m asking the Titch, not you lot. Sylvie and her boyfriend Carl.’ Miranda reached out with her pointy boot and gently prodded me with it. ‘Will you come, Sylvie?’

No one ever called me Sylvie at school apart from the teachers. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.

I had to say no, of course. The very idea of Carl and me going to one of Miranda’s parties was preposterous. But you didn’t just say No thanks to a girl like Miranda.

‘Well, that would be lovely,’ I mumbled, ready to start in on some excuse.

Miranda didn’t give me a chance.

‘Great,’ she said, jumping down from the wash basin. ‘See you around eight. It’s ninety-four Lark Drive.’

She was off with a flounce of her short skirt before I could say another word. The others all ran after her, still begging to come too.

I was left with my heart thudding, wondering what on earth I was going to do now.

‘MIRANDA HOLBEIN’S INVITED me to a party at her house tonight,’ I told Lucy at the start of afternoon school.

‘Oh yeah, like, really!’ said Lucy, breaking off a finger of her Kit-Kat and giving it to me. ‘I know it’s mean to bad-mouth people but I truly can’t stand that Miranda. She’s so posey, such a show-off.’

‘I know. But she really has invited me. And she’s asked Carl too.’

‘But she doesn’t know Carl. She doesn’t even know you, Titch.’

‘I know. I don’t get it.’

‘Is it a big party? Do you think she’ll invite me?’ said Lucy, sounding hopeful.

‘I thought you couldn’t stick her.’

‘I can’t. And you wouldn’t ever catch me going to one of her parties. Honestly, the things that go on!’

‘What?’

‘Well, this girl in Year Ten knows her, and her cousin went to a party in the summer, and apparently …’ Lucy started whispering stuff in my ear.

‘Rubbish!’ I said uneasily. ‘You’re making it up. No one does that anyway, not in real life.’

‘You wouldn’t know. You’re so innocent, Titch,’ said Lucy.

I wanted to hit her even though she was my friend. I could put up with Miranda and her pals patronizing me but not Lucy. Her mum and dad called her Lucy Locket and she had three Bear Factory bears, Billy, Bobby and Bernie, and she still liked watching her old Disney videos.

‘Well, if I go to Miranda’s party I won’t be innocent much longer,’ I said.

‘You’re not really going to go, are you?’ said Lucy.

‘Of course I am,’ I said, though I had no intention whatsoever of doing so.

‘And Carl’s going?’

‘Yep,’ I said, wondering why toads weren’t tumbling out of my lips, I was telling so many lies.

‘But you’re always saying Carl’s so antisocial,’ said Lucy.

This has been a kind lie. When I first made friends with Lucy I wanted to show Carl that I’d managed to make a good friend even though I felt so lonely and half a person without him. I also wanted to show Lucy just how close Carl and I still were. I suppose I wanted to show off. I was mad enough to invite them both round to tea one Saturday. It was awful.

Lucy arrived in a dreadful silly-frilly dress and shoes with heels. They seemed too big for her. Maybe they belonged to her mother. She wore thick make-up, though she forgot she was wearing it and kept rubbing her eyes so it smeared all over the place and made her look like a panda. She spoke in a silly self-conscious way in front of Carl, and whenever he said anything at all, even ‘Can you pass me the cakes?’ she giggled. She practically wet herself she giggled so much. I wanted to die.

Carl made a bolt for home the moment he’d finished his tea. He barely paused to say goodbye. I didn’t want Lucy’s feelings to be hurt so I pretended he was going through a very shy withdrawn stage and couldn’t really cope with company.

Carl was incredulous that I had become so friendly with Lucy. For a long time he used poor Lucy’s name whenever he thought anything especially twee, silly or naff.

‘Oh, dear God, switch that programme off, it’s too Lucy for words,’ or ‘What have you got that skirt on for, it’s a bit Lucy, isn’t it?’ or ‘You don’t look right with lipstick, Sylvie, it makes you look Lucyfied.’

It wasn’t fair. I didn’t really like Lucy very much either, but I needed someone to go round with at school.

‘I can’t see Carl wanting to go to a party with a whole lot of strangers,’ Lucy said now.

‘You’re probably right,’ I said.

I went home in a daze. I was sure I wasn’t really going to Miranda’s. I wanted Carl to refuse, and then I could use him as a convenient excuse.

When I got home to our semi-detached houses I went down Carl’s crazy-paving path instead of my own. I knocked at the front door and Carl’s brother Jake opened it. He just grunted when he saw me and ambled off up the stairs again, leaving the door open so I could come inside.

He was sixteen, in Year Eleven at my school. He wasn’t as brainy as his brother and hadn’t sat for any special scholarships. He didn’t look a bit like Carl. He had dark untidy hair and very dark eyes so you could barely see his pupils. He’d been quite small for his age once but now he was this great lanky guy of at least six foot. He was bright enough but he rarely bothered with much homework. The only thing he worked hard at was playing his guitar.

I wondered what Miranda would make of Jake. I thought he was far more her cup of tea, can of lager, whatever. He’d probably go for her too, even though she was only in Year Nine. I had a feeling Miranda was already famous throughout the school.

‘Miranda Holbein has invited Carl and me to a party tonight!’ I called up the stairs after him.

He paused on the top step. ‘Cool!’ he said, trying not to sound too impressed. He peered down at me. ‘She’s invited Carl?’ He shook his head. ‘He won’t go.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Where is he? In his bedroom doing his homework?’

‘Like the nerdy little swot he is,’ said Jake, pushing Carl’s door open. ‘Oh. Not here. His bike was round the back so he must be somewhere.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll look for him,’ I said.

I was pleased. Jake hadn’t said more than two consecutive words to me for years. Just one mention of Miranda Holbein and I seemed to have become cool by association.

I went looking for Carl. I tried the living room first, the looking-glass twin of my own. I liked the Johnsons’ so much more. I loved their crimson velvet sofa and bright embroidered throws and big saggy cushions and the large red and blue and purple paintings on the wall.

Carl’s mum was an amateur artist and the house was like her own gallery. She’d always nurtured Jake and Carl’s artistic abilities too, encouraging them to crayon on the kitchen walls when they were little. There were a few of my own scribbles too. I’d crayoned a crazy wedding all along one wall, with me in a white meringue and Carl in a white suit so that we looked like an advert for washing powder. There was a long colourful row of wedding guests: my mum and dad and Jake, and I’d added lots of children from school and our cat Flossie and my rabbit Lily Loppy (both long deceased) and Jake’s dog Wild Thing (so wild he’d run away and never come back). They were all wearing big pink carnations, even the cat and the dog, and the rabbit had two, one on each ear.

Carl’s mum Jules was washing lettuce at the kitchen sink.

‘Hi, Sylvie sweetheart,’ she said.

‘Hi, Jules,’ I said.

She wouldn’t let me call her Aunty Julia, let alone Mrs Johnson. She was Jules to everyone, even the little kids at the nursery school where she worked part time. She’d obviously been doing finger painting with them today. There were little red and yellow fingerprints all over her big flowery trousers.

‘I think Carl’s down in his hut,’ she said.

‘Oh, great.’

‘Sylvie?’ said Jules. She paused, shaking the lettuce. ‘Is Carl OK?’

‘OK in what way?’

‘I don’t know.’ She picked a little slug out of the lettuce, shuddering. ‘Yuck! Any kind of way. He just seems a bit … quiet. You two haven’t had a row, have you?’

‘We never have rows,’ I said.

We did, but I generally gave in quickly because I couldn’t bear Carl being cross with me.

‘Maybe it’s something at school then,’ said Jules. ‘I keep wondering whether it was a good idea to uproot him and send him there.’

‘No it wasn’t!’ I said.

‘Oh, darling. I know it must have been very hard for you. For both of you. But you know what an old brainybox Carl is, and the grammar gets lots of boys into Oxbridge. He’s keeping up with the work all right, I know that, though he’s had a lot of catching up to do. Maybe he’s just tired from working so much. I don’t know though. He just sort of mooches about when he’s at home, like he’s got stuff on his mind.’

‘He’s always been a bit dreamy,’ I said uneasily.

I felt flattered to be asked about Carl, as if I was the one who had the key to all his secrets, but I knew how he’d hate to think I was discussing him with his mum.

‘Are you two still working on this book of yours?’ said Jules.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, though we hadn’t made up anything new since September, when I’d gone to the high school and Carl started at the grammar. I’d tried working on the book on my own but it wasn’t the same without Carl. I’d only written two pages and then decided they were so silly and sentimental I ripped them right out of the book.

‘When are we going to get to read it then?’ said Jules.

‘Oh, goodness! It’s kind of private,’ I said.

Jules shrieked as she found a truly gigantic slug. She dropped the lettuce in the sink, letting the cold water rinse it.

‘I feel I really should buy organic veg but, oh God, I hate these slimy slugs.’

‘Carl hates them too. He hates all creepy-crawlies.’

I had to be chief spider-catcher in the Glass Hut. Carl wanted to be a Buddhist and not kill anything but he wouldn’t have minded a holocaust of the insect world.

‘Tell me about it,’ said Jules. ‘Last time we had salad he found some little buggy thing on his plate and squealed a bit, just out of shock, I think, but Jake and Mick were merciless. He got teased for being a wimp the entire week, poor boy.’

Mick was Jules’s husband. He was a big broad man with a bit of a beer gut. He looked like a labourer in his scruffy T-shirts and sagging jeans but he was actually a lecturer in Politics at the university. He was always very kind to me but he teased me too. He called me Silent Sylvie because I barely said two words in his presence, and when I had my hair in plaits he could never pass me without pulling on a pigtail and going Ding-ding.

Carl said he sometimes couldn’t stick his dad.

I said Carl was lucky to still have his dad. That shut him up.

My dad isn’t dead. He just cleared off two years ago. I used to see him every weekend for the first few months, but when his girlfriend had their baby he stopped bothering.

Carl and I had great fun making up two warrior kings in Glassworld, one a jokey buffoon and one an untrustworthy philanderer. They donned heavy metal armour and fought in time to heavy-metal music, sweating inside their visors as they hacked and whacked frantically with their silver swords. They fought all day and half the night without managing to inflict a single wound, and then died within a minute of each other of exhaustion and apoplexy.

Jules gingerly batted the lettuce from one side of the sink to the other. ‘Horrid little sluggery sluggers,’ she said. She paused. ‘Sylvie, you don’t think Carl’s being teased at school, do you?’

I stared at her. ‘Everyone looks up to Carl,’ I said. ‘Everyone was just desperate to be his friend.’

‘Yes, I know they made a big fuss of him at Milstead. But maybe it’s different at the grammar? All those boys … He says he’s got friends but he never really talks about them properly. I’ve tried asking him about it but he just clams up with me. You know, “I’m fine, Mum, just leave it.”’

‘I know,’ I said. He clammed up with me too.

‘Thank God he’s got you for his friend, Sylvie. But I wish he’d make more friends. He just holes up in his room or down in the hut. I wish he’d get out more.’

‘Well, I’ve come to invite him to a party,’ I said.

‘Really! Oh wow, great,’ said Jules, suddenly so happy she threw the soaking lettuce up in the air, showering herself with water drops.

‘I don’t think he’ll go though,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’m going. It’s this girl at school and she’s so grown up and scary – goodness knows what they’ll get up to at her party.’

I wanted Jules to come the heavy mother and forbid Carl and me to go now, but she still looked eager.

‘You and Carl are sensible kids. You won’t do anything too silly. And if it’s at this girl’s house I suppose her parents will be there keeping an eye on things.’

Miranda seemed to come from such an alien world I couldn’t even imagine her having parents.

‘Don’t get too excited, Jules,’ I said. ‘You know Carl isn’t really a party kind of boy.’

‘Go and ask him!’

‘OK, OK!’

I went out of the Johnsons’ kitchen door into their back garden. It was the twin of ours, but Jules had been imaginative with all sorts of colourful plants and weird painted statues and shrubs. Wind chimes tinkled from every tree as I walked down the garden, right to the bottom behind the yew hedge, where the Glass Hut was.

IT LOOKED LIKE an ordinary large garden hut at first glance. It was made of planks of pale wood with a latched door and two small windows. They each had a stained-glass roundel of white-robed angels with gold wings gliding across a ruby glass carpet. I stroked them gently, my finger following the black lead outline, our little ritual ever since Carl bought them with his Christmas money last year.

I knocked at the door, our special knock, Morse code for glass. Carl was supposed to knock right back. I waited. The Glass Hut was silent.

‘Carl?’ I called.

I heard a sigh.

‘Is that you, Carl?’

‘Not just now, Sylvie. Sorry. I’m doing my homework.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, and I opened the door and went inside.

Carl wasn’t doing his homework. He didn’t even have his books out of his school bag. He was lying back on the old velvet sofa, hands behind his head, staring up at the chandelier.

It was a real cut-glass Victorian chandelier, a little one with twelve droplets, though three were broken, and the chandelier itself didn’t actually work. Mick wouldn’t let Carl have the hut properly wired for it, so the only light was from the naked bulb sticking out of the wall. Carl had painted it with rainbow swirls so that it looked slightly more decorative.

There were five shelves running round two of the walls, originally meant to hold flowerpots and seed trays. Carl kept his glass collection here, in glowing colour-co-ordinated rows: little glass animals on the top shelf, then drinking glasses, then vases, then ashtrays and paperweights, and then his precious pieces. The Glass Boy stood in the middle of the special shelf, tranquil, dreamy, his thick hair brushed forward over his forehead in strands of glass. He didn’t wear any clothes but he didn’t look remotely self-conscious. He stood staring at some distant horizon, his arms loosely hanging, his legs braced. Maybe he was watching for something, waiting for someone.

Carl’s Great-aunt Esther had called him her Cupid, but he wasn’t a baby and he didn’t have little wings or even a bow and arrow. Carl had fallen in love with the Glass Boy on a visit to his great-aunt when he was five. She had fallen in love with this serious, angelic little nephew, so different from his harum-scarum brother. At the end of the visit she presented Carl with her ‘Cupid’.

Carl’s parents thought this a bizarre gesture. Even Jules was sure Carl would play with the Glass Boy and smash him into glass splinters. But Carl kept him on a shelf and simply treasured him. When he was six he asked for a glass animal for a birthday present. He started looking for glass vases and ashtrays and ornaments in jumble sales and summer fairs as he got older. His collection grew too big for his small bedroom so one summer he quietly started converting the garden hut.

I helped too, and went on all his glass-hunting expeditions. I couldn’t get properly interested on my own behalf. I liked dangling crystals with their rainbow sparkles, but I couldn’t see why all the other glass stuff meant so much to Carl. Still, I was very happy to be included in his glass world. I knew all about Murano glass and planned for us to go on a special trip to Venice one day – maybe for our honeymoon!

I looked everywhere for a glass girl, but so far hadn’t found one. I invented the Glassworld Chronicles instead. They started off as a fairy story about a boy and a girl cast out into such a wintry world that they froze and turned into glass. We elaborated and expanded until together we’d invented an entire glass world and a cast of hundreds. My glass boy and girl became the King and Queen of Glassworld. They had family, friends and bitter enemies. There were a host of servants, some treasures, some treacherous. They had a menagerie of exotic pets: penguins and polar bears, a pair of hairy mammoths, and a stable of white unicorns with glass horns and hooves.

They were all so real to me that I actually shivered inside the hot little hut, living it all so vividly. Nowadays I was on tenterhooks with Carl, wondering if he’d play properly. I didn’t know what tenterhooks were, but whenever he made fun of me I felt little stabs in my stomach as if I’d been caught like a fish on a hook.

‘Sylvie, I’m not in the mood,’ said Carl, his eyes closed.

He was stretched out like a marble effigy on a tomb, not moving. I looked at his beautiful face, his long lashes, his slim nose, his soft lips. I wondered what would happen if I subverted the traditional fairy tale and woke Carl with a kiss.

I giggled nervously. Carl opened one eye.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Just run away and play, little girl.’

‘Don’t you little girl me. I’m only two months younger than you. And I don’t want to play. I’m here to pass on a party invitation.’

‘Oh God,’ said Carl, closing his eye again. ‘Please don’t make me go to Lucy’s party.’

‘It’s not Lucy’s party. It’s Miranda Holbein’s party.’

‘Who?’ said Carl. ‘Miranda? I don’t know any Mirandas.’

‘Neither do I, not properly, but everyone knows about her. I told Jake she’d asked us to her party and he was dead impressed, you could tell. I’m sure I’ve told you about her, Carl. She’s just amazing. She’s the girl everyone wants to be but wouldn’t dare. Goodness knows why she’s invited us.’

Carl lay still as a statue but both his eyes were open now.

‘I don’t get this us bit,’ he said.

‘Well, I was going on about you a bit in the girls’ toilets. Miranda and the others thought I was making it up but Patty Price was there and she started on about you too.’

‘So I’m the chief topic of conversation in your girls’ toilets?’ said Carl.

I was scared he might get cross. It was a huge relief when he started chuckling.

‘So there they all are, the fresh young damsels of Milstead High School, each locked in her lavatory cubicle, seated in splendour, calling to each other like demented doves: Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl, Carl!’

I started giggling. I sat on the edge of the sofa, by his feet.

‘Scrunch up a bit, Carl. OK, Milstead Pin-Up Boy. What shall I say to Miranda?’

‘When is this party of hers?’

‘Like, tonight. She decided just like that.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Imagine us suddenly announcing to our mums, “Right, I’m having a party tonight. Provide all the food and drink and music and stuff and make yourselves scarce.” Do they have food at proper teenage parties? And will they have real drink, do you think – wine and beer and vodka or whatever?’

‘Well, we’ll find out,’ said Carl, sitting up.

I stared at him. ‘We’re not really going to go are we? I mean, it’s such short notice we could easily get out of it.’

‘Why don’t we go if she’s such an amazing girl?’

‘Well. Because … I’ll feel so shy and stupid.’

‘I’ll be there, silly.’

‘And I don’t have the right sort of things to wear. I know they all wear the most incredible stuff out of school. Miranda looks at least eighteen. I wish I didn’t look such a total baby.’ I tugged at my plaits. ‘Look at my hair, for God’s sake!’

‘You can brush it out and wear it loose. It looks great like that,’ Carl said encouragingly.

‘I could wear my black skirt and hitch it right up. Do you think that would look … sexy?’

‘Not if it’s all bunched up at the waist. You don’t want to look as if you’ve tried too hard. Just wear your jeans and a T-shirt and you’ll look fine.’ Carl gave my hand a quick squeeze. I clung to his fingers.

‘Are you teasing me, Carl? Are we really going?’

‘Yep, why not? Everyone’s telling us to grow up and socialize and party like everyone else, so we’ll try it out, eh? Don’t worry. If it’s a total bore or dead scary or whatever we’ll just stay for one drink and then come straight home again.’

‘Carl … I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of told Miranda you’re my boyfriend.’

‘Well, I am, aren’t I?’ said Carl.

His blond hair fell forward over his brow like the Glass Boy’s on the shelf. He smiled at me, his brown eyes shining. All the dangling crystals glittered in the late sunlight, casting rainbow reflections across the hut. I felt dazzled with happiness.

I ran home to try on all my clothes and experiment with hairstyles for the party. I met up with Miss Miles on the stairs. Miss Miles is our lodger. She’s an old lady who will never wear purple like the poem. She has several beige knitted suits and cardigans, and thick beige stockings which always loop around her ankles, Nora Batty-style. She has her hair dyed a blondy beige colour and rubs beige foundation over her wrinkly face. Her spare beige bra and big knickers drip on the towel rail once a week, evidence that she is totally colour co-ordinated.

‘You look full of the joys of spring today, Sylvie,’ she said.

‘I’m going to a party,’ I said.

‘Ooh, lovely! I hope you get lots of ice cream and jelly and birthday cake.’

‘Er – yes,’ I said, dodging round her. She seems to think I’m about six years old.

‘What colour is your party frock?’ she called after me.

‘I haven’t really got one,’ I said, going into my little bedroom.

Mum used to sleep in Miss Miles’s room when Dad was around. She’s moved into the little bedroom now. I got the box room. It wasn’t much bigger than a cupboard. I had a mirror, but I had to stand on my bed to see what I looked like all over.