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someone your own age,’ she had added,
     looking up from perusing the delights of ‘Torbay and the English Riviera’. ‘An old friend from school, maybe. Do you good.’
    School! Alexa had been too shocked to speak. After life in the social fast lane, the thought of her late, despised schoolfellows
     made her almost want to retch.
    ‘I saw Mary Stevenson today,’ Mum added. ‘She says Polly’s home.’
    ‘Boz Eyes, you mean,’ Alexa snarled, her lip remaining firmly curled.
    Her mother’s eyes widened behind her glasses. ‘I didn’t realise
she’d
changed her name as well. It’s quite the fashion, isn’t it? But – Boz Eyes . . .?’ Mum looked puzzled.
    ‘We used to call her that at school,’ Alexa snapped. ‘She squinted. Probably still does.’
    As Mum chuntered on, Alexa tuned out, then suddenly tuned back in again.
    ‘What did you say?’ she demanded.
    ‘I was just saying that Polly’s at Oxford,’ Mum repeated obligingly, frowning over ‘Cream, Crabs and Coastline: A Cornish
     Cornucopia’.
    Alexa stared, her mind’s eye filling with pictures of dreamy spires, of carefree, well-heeled young men in white tie drinking
     champagne. Oxford! Old Boz Eyes had gone
there
? It was too bloody irritating to contemplate, except that, of course, it might be useful. A sly smile began to curve Alexa’s
     thin lips.
    Mum, most unexpectedly and possibly unprecedentedly, was right. It might be worth seeing Polly. One never knew who she knew.
    Lots of people she had cultivated had relatives at Oxford; there could be a way back in.

Chapter 4
    The Shropshire Arms had changed, Alexa thought, opening the door on what had been a room full of sticky carpets and fruit
     machines to find newly exposed flagstones and artfully mismatching wooden tables with vases of fresh flowers.
    And Polly Stevenson had changed even more. That could not
possibly
be her. Panic and shock coursed through Alexa as the pretty, slender woman with shining brown hair waved from a corner table.
     Was it actually at her though? Alexa looked behind her to check, but there was nothing to see but the chic striped bucket
     chairs and exposed brickwork of the bijou new dining area.
    Was this really Boz Eyes? But there was no sign of a squint; the eyes examining her as she approached were big, dark, thick-lashed
     and absolutely regular. Cheekbones had come from somewhere. And had she had a lip job?
    ‘Allison?’
    ‘
Alexa
,’ Alexa corrected stiffly.
    ‘Oh yes.’ Alexa noted, annoyed, that Polly seemed amused, for some reason. ‘You’ve changed your name.’
    ‘As have you,’ Alexa shot back.
    ‘How do you mean?’ Polly’s eyes widened in surprise.
    ‘Well, whatever happened to Boz Eyes?’ Alexa asked brightly, throwing her jacket on the back of the chair, pulling it out
     and sitting down.
    She saw Polly flinch. ‘The squint’s gone. A while ago.’
    Still touchy about it, Alexa thought, half triumphant, but half cautious too. She might need this woman. She had better be
     careful.
    ‘You look the same, though,’ Polly added, to Alexa’s silent fury. The remark was not, however, payback for the squint remark,
     or even intentionally provocative. The snapping snake eyes and black hair
were
the same, as were the thin lips and skinny frame. And even as a schoolgirl, she had given this same impression of both hiding
     something and knowing something the rest of the world didn’t.
    ‘I
can’t
look the same,’ Alexa said indignantly.
    Polly regarded her, head on one side again. Certainly, Alexa was more dressed up than before – the studded leather miniskirt
     and high-heeled sparkling sandals looked more nightclub than country pub, even if this one had been given an aristocratic
     makeover. She felt underdressed in comparison, in the same old white jeans that were her faithful standbys for any night out,
     teamed with the usual black top. There had been no time for make-up, not that she bothered with it much these