I bit into my Big Mac. It tasted like cardboard with ketchup and a slice of pickle on it.

A couple stopped on the other side of the window, trying to keep dry while they waited for a bus. They had their arms linked and he was holding the umbrella over her head. They looked really happy.

I felt like I was going to choke. I dropped my burger and bit my lip.

Don’t cry, I told myself. Wait till you get back outside.

I’d never thought about it before, but I reckoned that was why people in songs were always walking in the rain, so nobody could tell that they were sobbing their hearts out.

I opened my tiny tub of ketchup and dipped a chip in it, thinking about all the other girls in the world whose birthday was on the twenty-fifth of October. They were having parties with all their friends laughing around them. They had heaps of presents and everybody was hugging them and telling them how terrific they looked. Their mothers loved them. Then I thought about a girl I’d read about who died at her own birthday party. When I first read it I thought it was really sad and depressing, but just then, dripping in one corner of McDonald’s, I would have changed places with her like a shot. I mean, so she was dead, so what? At least she’d had a good time. It was a lot better than dying of pneumonia with the smell of stale grease on your breath.

I stuck my straw in my milkshake and took a sip. The couple on the other side of the window were snogging. The umbrella banged against the glass.

I gave up and let the tears come. Sip … sip … gulp … gulp … sip … sip … gulp … gulp…

I felt like a trapped animal, as if no matter what I did I was never going to escape. I was always going to be Hilary Spiggs’ little kid, being yelled at and told what to do.

I was crying so much that I didn’t even know he was there, sitting at the table beside me.