Sunshine flooded McDonald’s.

“OK. I’ll tell my mum Lana likes it like this.”

I felt like someone was pouring hot fudge sauce through my veins. Lana likes it like this… It was as though we’d known each other for ages. That had to mean that I’d see him again.

Les stuffed the chip packet and his napkin and the straw wrapper into his burger box. There wasn’t one crumb or blob of ketchup at his place.

“I’ve got to get back to the shop,” he said. He made it sound like he’d rather go anywhere else. “Do you want to come with me and hang out?”

I didn’t have to think even once, never mind twice. “Yeah, sure.”

Let the old bat worry that I’d been raped or run over by a car or something. It served her right.

Les took me home when he finished work. I couldn’t believe my luck. He not only had a job and a flat (well, a room in a flat), he had a car. It wasn’t a Porsche or a Jeep or anything cool like that, but it wasn’t an old banger like Charley’s van that you had to park on a hill so you could get it started the next day, either.

It had gone midnight by the time we got to my road. I made him let me off at the corner. In case she was hovering behind the curtains.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” asked Les. “I could come in with you if you want.”

He sounded really concerned.

“No, I’ll be fine.” I undid my seat belt and took hold of the door handle. “She isn’t violent. She’s just a pain.”

The last thing I wanted was for him to meet Hilary. Women often end up looking just like their mothers. Oprah did a whole programme on it. What if Les took one look at her, decided that was what I was going to end up like, and I never saw him again? Plus, she’d be sure to tell him I was only fifteen. Probably before I’d even introduced him. “You know she’s only fifteen,” she’d say. “Do you want to go to prison?”

I pulled on the handle. “She’ll be in bed now anyway,” I lied. “It’ll be all right.”