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Sylvie’s eyes opened and she sensed she had been woken by a noise. It wasn’t unusual. When he was well, Sylvie’s dad often left for work in the middle of the night. Two or three in the morning, if he had to drive the lorry to Aberdeen or further. For a moment, she imagined everything was back to normal before reality crashed in. Her dad wouldn’t be working.

Sylvie looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was 5.16 a.m. If her mum was out running, that meant she might be in the kitchen again soon, crashing around and cooking food for breakfast, which she wouldn’t touch herself. What was the bad news now? Sylvie’s stomach belched up some acid in protest. She plumped the pillow and tried to get back to sleep.

Then there was a click at the window. Tired and disorientated, Sylvie thought maybe it was hail-stoning. Because of the snow globe on her bedside table perhaps. But it was the middle of summer.

The next click was louder and it was followed by a cough. It woke Sylvie up like cold water to the face, and she padded to the window, pulled back the curtain and wiped away the condensation. Long strands of light streamed in. The sky was powder blue and hot orange. Sylvie hadn’t seen the sunrise before.

Movement drew her attention down. There, in the front garden, straining to look up at the house, was Victoria. She was hopping from one foot to the other and Sylvie wondered if she was hurt. Victoria started to flail her arms and beckon Sylvie.

‘Wait there,’ Sylvie mouthed, and she ran downstairs in her pyjamas as quietly as she could. Her mum was asleep on the sofa, snoring gently. It looked squalid somehow in this light. Sylvie cringed at the sound as she unbolted and opened the front door. She closed it behind Victoria as gently as she could.

‘What are you doing?’ she hissed, but Victoria put her fingers on her lips and gestured for Sylvie to follow her up. Every single step seemed to creak and Victoria held her hand out to the side like an orchestra conductor to set the timing so that they both moved at exactly the same moment, creating one pair of feet on the stairs, not two.

They heard Margaret snort loudly and move, so they stood still like statues for a few seconds until her breath became regular again.

Victoria pointed to the spot outside the bathroom and Sylvie understood she was to wait there until Victoria came out. Even the wee seemed thunderously loud, and Sylvie kept glancing anxiously downstairs and at the bedroom door.

Finally, they went into Sylvie’s room and closed the door.

Victoria bent over, holding her abdomen. ‘Fuck!’ she whispered. ‘I’ve needed a wee for about an hour. My bladder was rock hard. I think I might have poisoned myself.’ She bit her bottom lip and screwed up her eyes, rocking gently, relief slowly washing over her.

Sylvie was wide awake by then.

‘Have you got a nighty I can wear?’ Victoria asked. Sylvie opened the drawer and Victoria grabbed a nightshirt, a faded, oversized T-shirt with teddy bears on the front. Victoria turned away and took her clothes off, slipping the nighty on. Her backbone and ribs were protruding out, and there was a gap between her thighs that Sylvie didn’t have. The nightshirt swamped her, making her look childlike.

Sylvie got into her bed at the top end and Victoria jumped in at the other end. Sylvie threw her a pillow.

Getting a better look at her, Sylvie was startled by Victoria’s appearance. Her face was pale, her eyes big and glassy. Her hair was stringy at the front, lacking its usual bounce and sheen. ‘What’s going on?’ Sylvie whispered. ‘Are you alright?’ she added to soften it.

Victoria pointed and they both put their heads underneath the pink covers. It felt womblike, reminiscent of the cringeworthy educational videos they’d had to endure at school. The heartbeat thudding in Sylvie’s ears intensified the sensation.

‘Yeah! It was an amazing night! You should have come, Sylv. I missed you!’

Sylvie felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t gone with her to Ryan’s after the ice skating. Victoria’s feet were cold against her. She wrapped them in the duvet and rubbed at them.

‘Right, so… tell me, then!’ Sylvie said.

‘We went up Brantham to Ryan’s house.’

‘Were his parents away?’

‘Nah, he’s got his own house. It was such a laugh.’

‘Who was there?’

‘Everyone, like Jimmy, Charmaine. Loads of people. Like twenty people or something.’

‘Ugh, that Charmaine is a bitch.’

‘She’s alright really.’

Sylvie bristled at that, especially after the way Charmaine’d spoken to her at the ice rink, when Victoria was there.

‘Vic, have you been home…?’ Sylvie almost didn’t want to know the rest, but morbid compulsion drove her on.

‘Not yet, no. Told you, I said to my mum I was stopping at yours. So, if anyone asks, I was here, right? I am here anyway.’ Victoria’s lips looked dry and powdery, like the skin might split.

‘OK.’ Sylvie shrugged.

‘Thanks, mate.’

Something was off. There was a strange speed and intensity to the way Victoria was talking.

‘Are you alright, Vic? What have you taken?’

‘A trip.’ Victoria couldn’t hide the proud smile that had cracked across her face. ‘It was so weird; it was like a little bit of paper with a cute little face printed on it. Like that edible paper you used to get from the sweet shop. I swallowed it, but this other lad, he put it in his eye. Said it hits you faster that way.’

‘Eurgh.’ Sylvie instinctively put her hand up to her own eye at the thought. It bought her some time, too, to play it cooler than she felt about Victoria and the drugs. And the rest.

Victoria was opening up now, getting into full swing. ‘I just had one, but this other lad, apparently he’d had about five, and he was just sitting in the corner and he couldn’t like speak or anything. He was chewing at his lips and they were all bleeding and stuff.’

‘What was it like for you?’

‘It was like… I just felt all floaty and like everything was more intense. Sounds stupid – I felt like I was in a computer game or something.’

Sylvie tried to hide her wide-eyed astonishment, the fact she was hanging on Victoria’s every word.‘Was it scary?’

‘Nah.’ Victoria laughed. ‘Although I dunno about that lad who’d had a face full.’

There’d been a rumour at school about someone’s friend of a friend who’d taken drugs and thought a Mars bar was chasing him down the street. They said that his cousin had found him opening the window of the bedroom and climbing out onto the sill. He thought he was going to fly. They’d all laughed at the time at school… about the Mars bar bit anyway.

‘So how much that cost you?’

‘Nowt, Ryan gave us it. I didn’t have much cash with me. Don’t have any anyway at the minute. And Charmaine…’ Victoria went on. She had to pause to take a chance to swallow. ‘We did a Ouija board and her eyes were like rolling back in her head and everything. She was just pushing the thing with her hand, though, you could tell.’

Victoria chewed on her lip, like she didn’t know whether to say something else. Sylvie noticed another bruise-like mark on her neck. She pointed at it. ‘You walked into something again, have you?’

Victoria didn’t answer and they lay there in silence for a while. Sylvie started to drift off again, until Victoria tapped her on the foot.

‘I did it, Sylv. At least… I think I did. Do you hate me?’

Sylvie froze. She considered pretending she was asleep, but she couldn’t leave it like that. It wasn’t like she would be able to get back to sleep anyway.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ryan.’

Sylvie tried not to let her face distort. She focused all her energy on not allowing a single tear to escape.

‘Sorry, I know you liked him, Sylv. But I liked him too. We both liked him, didn’t we? And Jimmy, he’s after you.’

‘Is he?’ Sylvie’s words sounded high and strained. ‘So, what happened? What was it like?’ She squeezed Victoria’s foot and tried to sound chirpy.

‘Let’s just go to sleep, yeah. I’ll tell you later,’ Victoria said.

They both lay down and Victoria pulled Sylvie’s feet in close, hugging them to her chest.

Victoria fell asleep almost instantly, a serene look on her face. Sylvie took the opportunity to study it closely, undisturbed, the curve of her lips and the light down around her hairline. Victoria’s skin was completely unblemished, almost translucent. Its paleness and the mark on her neck gave her a vampiric quality.

A strand of blonde hair fell over Victoria’s face and Sylvie brushed it away. She looked so vulnerable lying there like that. Sylvie thought of her and Ryan together and how Victoria would always just be one of those people who could have whatever she wanted.