‘Run, Nadine,’ Karin yelled and grabbed my hand. She was fast, her small feet drumming the ground. We’d lost him by the time we reached Gracehills Park, a shortcut home from school. We cut across the grass towards the tennis courts and into the shady passageway leading towards the park gates. Bare branches tangled overhead. The wintery sun glanced off our faces then cast us into shadow again.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

‘He’s a freak,’ Karin linked my arm and shuddered. ‘All that acne…disgusting. I felt sorry for his sister and that’s the thanks I get for being her friend.’

‘Did you have a row with her about the party?’

‘What party?’

‘Lisa Maye’s. He said―’

‘He’s a liar.’ She flicked her blonde hair over her shoulders. ‘I was honest with Sheila about her acne. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings but sometimes the truth has to be told. Did you know it’s contagious?’

‘I don’t think it is.’

‘You’re wrong.’ She was emphatic. ‘It’s a filthy disease and it’s contagious. See that spot on my forehead?’ She pushed her hair back. The smooth skin between her eyebrows was marred by two tiny pimples, barely visible. ‘That’s how it begins,’ she said. ‘I’ve been to the doctor and he’s treating me with a special ointment so that it doesn’t spread. But I can’t risk being infected again.’

I wanted to reassure her that she was wrong. I knew all about acne. It was one of my dreads. So far I was pimple-free. I’d read medical articles that claimed it was not contagious but to contradict Karin would suggest she was lying when, clearly, it was the doctor who’d made a mistake.

‘Where’s your bike?’ My mother asked when I arrived home.

‘I decided to walk home with Karin instead.’

‘Karin?’

‘The girl we met when we bought my school uniform.’

‘Of course. I remember her. Will your bike be safe?’ She looked worried. ‘ You know how expensive it was.’

My parents had presented it to me on my twelfth birthday, a sturdy racing bike that I loved. The following day I’d find the tyres slashed. The handlebars were twisted and the pump broken. All repairable and a small price to pay for my friendship with Karin.

I was her bodyguard, strong, tough, and protective. She relied on me to keep her safe from Theo Giles and his boot boy friends who, for a while after the incident in the bicycle shed, waylaid us with water bombs, eggs and globs of spittle on our way home from school. I spoke to Miss Knowles, showed her the egg stains on the sleeves of my blazer. The bullying stopped shortly afterwards.

I no longer hung around with the girls from primary school. My friendship with Karin was intense and exclusive. We couldn’t let an evening go by without phoning each other to report on a row with a parent, a rant about a teacher, a glance from a boy. We sat cross-legged on my bed and sang Adam Ant songs at the top of our voices, a streak of white across our cheekbones, strands of hair braided with bows, jangling earrings.

We both lived in Gracehills but her house was larger than mine, detached and with an extension built on the side. This was where her father wrote books when he was home from his travels. Max Moylan was a travel writer. His books, translated into many languages, lined the bookshelves in his study. I never felt awkward or too tall when I was with him. Even if I had been taller, he would have made me feel petite with a few complimentary words. But Joan reminded me of a ghost, her footsteps too light, her gaze so vague I felt as if she was looking through me. She ran a flower shop in the village. I’d see her through the window as she made up bouquets and chatted to customers. She looked so different then, brisk and busy compared to the woman who became so maudlin and whiny whenever I stayed overnight in their house. Her voice would slur in protest when Max removed the bottle of wine from the table. He would coax her to eat a little and regale us with stories about his travels. Handsome Max Moylan, intrepid traveller and raconteur. We never grew tired of listening to him.

I was fifteen when the Corcoran family moved next door: mother, father, three sons and a daughter called Jenny. It was impossible not to like Jenny Corcoran. She was my age and mad about hip-hop. She introduced me to groups like Deadly Fish, Combustion EX and Middle-Sized Boyz. I liked the hard, urgent beat of their music and stopped listening to my favourite glam bands unless I was with Karin.

Jenny broke through our closed friendship. We were now a threesome but in the evenings my phone conversations with Karin were no longer artless and rambling. They were focused on Jenny. On the things she had said and done that day to offend Karin. The incidents she described, the insults Jenny was supposed to have inflicted on her were so different to what I’d witnessed that I wondered if we were living in parallel universes. When I tried to calm her down she accused me of taking sides. If I remained silent, unwilling to agree with her tirades, her resentment grew. We’d been friends for two years, she said, and I was allowing someone I barely knew to break up that friendship. Was that what I wanted? I had to choose.

Life without Karin, I couldn’t imagine it. When Jenny called in the mornings I made excuses about not being ready for school. After a few mornings she stopped calling. Soon, she had created her own circle of friends. Watching them in the school canteen, their table crammed with chairs — the arrangements as to who sat where changing constantly but the group never losing its shape — I began to question why my friendship with Karin was so closed-off, so intensely concentrated on each other.

My body was smoothing out. It seemed to happen overnight. A metamorphoses that vanished my awkward angles or, perhaps, they just began to work for me. I lifted my hair and studied my cheekbones, the length of my neck, the smooth roundness of my chin, and did not flinch from my reflection. I stood tall, aware of unfamiliar sensations swooping low in my stomach when boys turned to stare. I hitched my skirt higher to show off my legs, rucked the hated school socks over my ankles, wore my tie at a rakish angle. Karin never had to grow into herself. She still had those same doll-like curves. We rowed more easily now. Trivial arguments could flare without warning. When I was convinced our friendship was over, and I’d be cast aside like Sheila, I was conscious of relief rather than regret. But she always rang, repentant, anxious to make up. And that was how things remained between us until that summer in Monsheelagh Bay when we tore each other apart.

Chapter 9

Monsheelagh – twenty-five years earlier

I’d heard so much from Karin about Cowrie Cottage that I believed it couldn’t possibly live up to its reputation. I was wrong. The cottage where she spent a month every summer with her parents was as perfect as she claimed. Perched on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, it had a thatched roof and windows framed with cowrie shells. My bedroom was tiny, a bed and a tallboy for my clothes. The low growl of the ocean lulled me to sleep at night and I awoke each morning to the call of kittiwakes swirling against the cliff face. A gate at the end of the back garden opened onto two paths. One ran along the top of the cliff and ended with stone steps leading down to Monsheelagh Bay. We used the steps when we needed to carry picnic baskets, windbreakers and the various bits and pieces necessary for a day on the beach. The second path was a shortcut forged through heather, descending in a steep, direct line to the cove. Jagged rocks bordered the base of the cliff and Joan constantly warned us to be careful when using the second path. Not that we paid any attention to her warnings. We had the agility of mountain goats and could reach the beach by this route within minutes of leaving the cottage.