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letters as he reads, “
Firelighters
. And, look, there’s a pretty picture of some flames.”
    Lee hands the box over with a grin as Parvati reaches up for a high five.
    “Burn!” She slaps his palm.
    “Or not-burn as the case may be.” Lee laughs and reaches out to ruffle Owen’s hair – a gesture Owen thwarts by ducking away, still looking pissed. Lee ignores him and opens the cool box. He goes for one of the revolting canned cocktails and then hands beers to Anna, Parvati and Dongle. When I reach for one, Lee gives me a look.
    “Pace yourself, Puberty.”
    Ignoring him, I get my own beer. This is not the sort of thing I have ever listened to
any
of my brothers about, least of all this one.
    “Where’s Kaz?” Lee asks.
    Dongle’s keen to prove he’s been paying attention. “With Rugby Tom.”
    “Selkirk? Bet that was cosy.”
    “That’s one word for it,” I mutter low enough that Dongle can’t hear. Lee knows the way I feel about the Kaz/Tom situation.
    “I feel like I’m missing something,” Parvati pipes up from the rug, one arm draped artfully over her knees as she sits and sips her beer. “You’re all talking in code. Rugby Tom, Kaz, who are these people?”
    “Kaz is Ruby’s friend who’s camping with us,” Owen says, finally emerging from his sulk as the firelighters glimmer beneath the logs. “Tom’s her boyfriend—”
    “
Ex
-boyfriend,” Lee and I correct him at the same time.
    “Right,” Dongle says. “Tom’s going out with that fit girl from the tearooms, isn’t he?”
    The way he says it, Dongle clearly thinks this is something we already know.
    It most certainly is not.
KAZ
    What am I supposed to do now? Do I tell Ruby that I’ve seen Stu – or will that spoil things for her? Will she become like I was when I was on the alert for Tom? Will every tattooed arm, every lean torso, every word that rhymes with “Stu” set her off? Only
worse
because I actually wanted to see Tom? From the second she ended things, Ruby could not have been clearer how she felt.
    “It’s over,” she told me on the phone after she’d seen him. “Stu had sex with another girl at that house party.”
    “I know,” I’d said, hating myself for it.
    “What do you mean?” I could picture her quick frown, the puzzled headshake.
    “Naomi heard a rumour…”
    “And you didn’t tell me?”
    “There’s always rumours, Ruby. I wanted to know whether this one was as true as it sounded.” Ruby read the words I wasn’t saying.
    “When did you talk to him?”
    “Just before lunch.” I’d woken him from his hangover – word of his transgression had spread whilst he was still trying to sleep it off. “He wanted to talk to you himself.”
    I hadn’t given Stu much choice. If he hadn’t told her, I would have.
    Ruby said nothing. All I could hear was the rattle of the wind as she walked.
    “I’m sorry, Ruby.”
    “I know,” she said, then, “It’s not your fault I had such a suckjob for a boyfriend.”
    “Do you want to talk about it?”
    “No. I want to watch Harry Potter.”
    Fifteen minutes later, Ruby was on my doorstep and we loaded up
The Philosopher’s Stone
. At the end of the film, she gave me a hug and told me I was forgiven. Her ex-boyfriend was not.
    Stuart Garside stopped being someone Ruby cared about when she dumped him. She deleted his number from her phone, binned all his photos and tore up the tickets of the gigs they’d been to. If she could have wiped her memories clean
Eternal Sunshine
-style, she would have. So that means she won’t want to know he’s here – doesn’t it?
RUBY
    Dongle is the least reliable informant ever. As soon as I start quizzing him about Tom’s mysterious fit girlfriend, he backs down.
    “Which tearooms?” I ask. There are about a million within a square mile of the seafront.
    Dongle mumbles something about the one at the end of the parade.
    “What were you doing in a tearoom?” Parvati hijacks the interrogation.
    “I go with