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“Come on, if you’re coming,” Cullum shouted.

Paige spun round. Realizing Charlotte had turned back with the others, she hurried to catch up.
Please God, don’t let Oliver think I’ve been waiting for him.

“He’s here,” she whispered as she reached Charlotte.

“No way!” Charlotte responded ironically.

“Do you think he saw me?”

“How do I know?” She cast a glance over her shoulder to check how far behind he and his mates were and almost choked with shock. “OMG! OMG!” she hissed. “Liam only just winked at me. I need oxygen. He is so totally amazing. Do you think he’s watching my ass?”

“Ssh, they’ll hear,” Paige warned with a laugh.

There was a burst of mirth from behind, and she immediately tensed. She hoped he wasn’t telling his mates that she’d sent him a friend request. If it turned out that was what they were laughing at, she was going to collapse and die. If only she hadn’t done it, she might not be feeling so stupid and self-conscious or thoroughly sick of herself right now.

Though the café was crowded, Matt and Ryan managed to snag a couple of tables by the window as another group left, while Cullum headed straight to the hatch to order. “I’d treat you,” he told Paige and Charlotte, “but I’ve only—”

“It’s OK,” Charlotte assured him, grabbing Paige’s fiver. “Cappuccino for you?”

“With chocolate,” Paige replied.

Since there was only one barista, they had a long wait for their drinks, but eventually they were all seated around the tables, with Oliver and his mates at one end and Paige and Charlotte at the other. It was a disaster, but since they could hardly ask Cullum and the others to swap places, they had no choice but to make the most of the fact that they were actually in the same caff as Oliver and Liam. Whether Oliver and Liam were feeling the same was doubtful, since they barely even glanced in their direction as they chatted and laughed with the rest of their mates. But then, during a rowdy group debate on who was going to score for Wales in the Six Nations match that afternoon, Oliver caught Paige’s eye and smiled. She nearly passed out, and had to thank God for reflexes, because it was the only way she managed to smile back.

“Did you see that?” she murmured to Charlotte as soon as he’d turned away.

“Are you kidding?” Charlotte whispered. “He’s definitely got the hots for you.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just being polite?”

“If that’s what you want to tell yourself, but no way did it look like that to me.”

“Oh my God. What do you think I should do?”

“Ask him for a shag.”

“Be serious.”

“OK, then I don’t know.”

“I can’t just go over there and talk to him.”

“Maybe he’ll come over here. Cullum, you tosser! That’s my cup.”

“Sorry,” he laughed, putting it down and picking up his own.

“Hey, Charlotte!” someone called out.

Realizing it was Liam, Charlotte’s eyes almost popped out. “OMG, he’s telling me to go over,” she muttered to Paige, already getting to her feet.

Desperate for Oliver to invite her too, Paige could only watch and feel foolish and envious as Charlotte made her way to the end of the table, where Liam pulled up a chair for her to sit down.

Minutes passed as Charlotte amazed and impressed Paige with the easy banter she seemed to fall into with Liam, while Oliver, appearing oblivious, talked to another of his mates. In the end, starting to feel like a total lemon, Paige leaned in toward Cullum and said, “So how come Owen isn’t here?”

Cullum’s eyebrows rose incredulously. “Why do you think?” he countered.

Realizing it was because of her, Paige felt herself flush. “I thought…I mean, you’ve told him it wasn’t me, haven’t you?”

“Course I have, but he said he still wasn’t going to show today if you were here.”

Paige couldn’t think what to say.

“Actually, now we’re on the subject,” Cullum ran on, “we’re all going back to my house afterward to watch the Six Nations. I’ve told Owen we really want him there, so if you could kind of, you know, back off when we leave here…He’s had a tough week, and I think he needs to find out who his real friends are.”

Paige’s heart was twisting; there was a buzzing in her ears that made it almost impossible to hear herself as she mumbled, “Yes, of course. I mean, don’t worry, I wouldn’t be able to make it anyway.” She wanted to leave now, to get as far away from here as it was possible to go, but Lucy wasn’t due back for another couple of hours, and with no phone reception she couldn’t call her mum.

She tried to catch Charlotte’s eye, but Charlotte was too busy enjoying herself to notice. Cullum was talking to the others again, his back half turned as though deliberately shutting her out. She didn’t understand it. He hadn’t been like this when they’d sat together in English during the week, or when they’d rehearsed
Under Milk Wood.
Not that there had been a chance to discuss anything then; Miss Kendrick was too much in their faces to allow what she considered idle chitchat.

Feeling too wretched to carry on sitting on the edge of things, she gathered up her bag and headed for the ladies’ room. Instead of going in, she turned toward the exit, and after collecting her board she started out of the campsite. It wasn’t that far to the King’s Head, probably about a mile along a narrow country road, and once there, with any luck, she’d be able to call her mother to come and fetch her.

It didn’t happen that way, because even when she got there her mobile still wouldn’t work and the pub was closed, so she couldn’t get inside to use a landline. She didn’t know what to do. It was too far to walk all the way home, and she was so cold she doubted she’d make it anyway.

With tears pricking her eyes she laid her board down and went to try the pub door, just in case.

It was definitely locked.

In desperation she walked round to the back of the building and climbed to the top of the car park, holding up her phone, willing it to catch a signal from somewhere, but there wasn’t even the glimmer of a single bar.

She shouldn’t have left the café. It was a stupid, childish thing to have done, especially without telling Charlotte. By now Charlotte would be wondering where she was, wanting to know why she’d gone off without saying a word, and Cullum would probably tell her. What would happen then? Would everyone start looking for her? They’d probably just assume she was in a sulk and would show up again when she was ready.

How childish they must already be thinking she was.

Nevertheless, a part of her was desperate to go back, but she was going to feel a total idiot traipsing up to the café with her board, like she’d just taken it for a walk or something. Where would she say she’d been? Maybe
I took off in a huff because Cullum clearly doesn’t believe my Facebook page was hacked?
Or
My feelings were hurt because everyone wants Owen to watch the match later, not me?
She could always say she’d needed to make a phone call, so she’d gone to try to find a signal. She shook her head. Like she’d really take her board for that!

It was the best she could come up with; even so, she still couldn’t bring herself to go back. Cullum obviously didn’t want her there, which no doubt meant Matt and Ryan didn’t either, and no way was she going to push herself in where she wasn’t wanted.

Dropping her bag on a random picnic table, she stared helplessly at her phone again. She wondered if Oliver was worried about her, or if he’d even realized yet that she’d left. Over half an hour had gone by, so Charlotte would no doubt have checked the ladies’ room by now, which meant they had to be wondering what had happened to her.

If they were, they certainly didn’t notice her as they drove past in Oliver’s Fiesta a few minutes later with their boards strapped to the roof. She didn’t catch a glimpse of Oliver, but Cullum was definitely in the passenger seat and Charlotte was in the back. Another car with more boards on top was close behind. She saw Ryan and Matt in that one, and was sure it was Liam at the wheel. If she hadn’t been tucked inside the car park, which meant they were almost past by the time she saw them, they might have seen her too. As it was, they were gone in seconds, and she suddenly felt so alone and so horribly abandoned that it was as though she had no place in the world to go.

She tried telling herself that was nonsense, but it was how she felt, and the fact that she couldn’t get hold of her mum and dad was making it worse. They’d had a horrible row last night. She had no idea what it was about; she’d just heard them shouting, so she’d put her earplugs in and turned up the music. She hated it when they rowed. Not that it happened often, but when it did it was like everything felt wrong and scary and like they totally needed to get over themselves. At least they’d seemed all right this morning, what little she’d seen of them, but her mum had said that they definitely weren’t going surfing after Josh’s football match, so there was no chance they might drive by at any minute.

She had to get a grip and remind herself that she wasn’t a child, so she could figure this out. She was sure Mr. Dixon, one of the science teachers, lived in this village, but the trouble was, even if he did, she had no idea which house was his. She could always knock on someone’s door and ask. Or she could sit here and wait until the pub finally opened so she could go in and use their phone.

Feeling close to tears again, and colder than she’d ever been in her life, she dropped her head against the drizzle and almost didn’t look up as a car came chugging steadily down the hill. Thank goodness she did, because the instant she saw it she leapt to her feet, waving madly.

“Grandma! Grandma!” she shouted, running out of the car park.

The little yellow Fiat kept going, past the village hall, around the bend, and out of sight.

Paige ran faster. She had no idea why her grandma was here—maybe Charlotte had rung as soon as she’d got reception and now everyone was searching for her.

As she reached the bend she fully expected her grandma to be long gone, tootling obliviously along the road toward the beach, but to her relief the Fiat was pulling up outside St. Cenydd’s Church.

“Grandma!” she shouted as Kay got out of the car.

Kay looked around in bewilderment.

“Grandma! It’s me.” Paige was almost there now.

“Goodness, Paige, what are you doing here?” Kay demanded. “I thought you were surfing.”

“I was. It’s a long story. Oh, Grandma, I’m so glad to see you,” and she promptly burst into tears.

—

A few minutes later, having delivered the leaflets she’d come to drop off for the parish, Kay was once again behind the wheel of her Fiat with Paige’s surfboard jutting out of a rear window and Paige herself wrapped in a fleecy blanket in the front seat.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Kay invited as they started up the hill.

Paige was staring down at her lifeless phone. No texts or calls from Charlotte. How mean was that? She was going to watch the match with everyone else, and obviously wasn’t sparing a single thought for her best mate! “Not really,” she answered miserably.

Kay continued to drive.

That was the weirdest and sometimes loveliest thing about her grandma: she never asked too many questions. She was the only person Paige knew who seemed comfortable with not talking for hours on end. Not that it was going to take them that long to get home, only about twenty minutes—although considering the way her grandma drove, it might be closer to thirty. She did everything so precisely, obeyed all the rules, and always seemed startled when others failed to do so. Road rage seemed to pass straight over her, even when someone behind was flashing their lights and honking their horn to make her speed up or let them pass. She just kept on going, hands on the wheel at ten and two, eyes straight ahead, and expression as neutral as if she were thinking no thoughts at all.

Paige longed to be able to switch her mind off the way her grandma seemingly could. Then she wouldn’t have to keep thinking about Oliver, or Charlotte, who had totally betrayed her, or Owen, who should have known she’d never deliberately hurt him, or Kelly Durham, who despised her for no good reason. Everything was just totally horrible. She wished they’d never moved here now. She couldn’t bear it that all her friends were getting together to watch rugby,
at Oliver’s house,
and she wasn’t allowed to join them.

Fighting back more tears, she glanced at her grandma, and amongst all the angst and self-pity she felt herself flood with affection. Kay was a funny old stick, as her mum would say, a woman who was definitely her own person, but she was always there when one of her family needed her, and she never made a fuss about anything. Paige wondered what she did when she was at home on her own, if she felt sad or happy with her life, how much she missed Grandpa. She never talked about him, but maybe that was because no one ever asked.

“Grandma?”

“Yes?” Kay’s eyes were tight to the road.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“How did you and Grandpa meet?”

With no hesitation, Kay replied, “It was when we were at college. He was studying to become an engineer and I was doing a bookkeeping course.”

“But how did you actually get together?”

Clearly having no problem with recall, Kay said, “Your grandpa noticed that some people weren’t very kind to me, so he made me his friend.”

Paige’s eyes widened. “Why were people unkind to you?”

“Because I wasn’t really like them.”

So she knew she was different. “Did it hurt your feelings when they were mean?”

“Yes, very much, but they never seemed to realize it. Or perhaps they didn’t care.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to ignore them, but it was Grandpa who really sorted them out.”

“How? What did he do?”

“He used to give them one of his stares.”

Paige giggled. “You mean the secret weapon,” she said, having heard about his famous look from her mother.

“That’s the one. He could make people feel very foolish with that look.”

Paige laughed and felt so glad for her grandma that she’d had Grandpa to take care of her that she wanted to hug the older woman.