She was popular – easily the most popular girl in the class. In our plays, she always played the princess. She was skinny and pretty and good at gymnastics and had long, black hair. She could do the splits because she was double-jointed and she only usually seemed to make friends with other girls who were as outgoing and double-jointed as she was. And I was quiet with short mousy hair and bad at gym. In fact I couldn’t even do a proper cartwheel, so I was over the moon when she made friends with me.

First, she sat next to me in art. She was very good at art. She could make things look like what they really were, instead of blobs or wiggles or whatever. She drew a picture of Nottingham’s annual Goose Fair – the helter-skelter, the big wheel, everything. Straight away she told me it was no good. “Rubbish,” I said. “It’s ever so good.”