Maisy finally managed a full somersault on her twenty eighth attempt. She lay on her back puffing and panting while the trampoline slowed down, gently bouncing her up and down until it finally came to a stop. ‘I did it,’ she proudly said out loud, ‘I knew I could.’

But there was no one there to share the success, all she could hear was her own breathing and a few distant birds singing across the fields. She shielded her eyes from the overhead sun and peered down the garden to the house. Everything looked still and quiet in the hazy heat. Then, at the distant front of the house, Mum appeared briefly in her old gardening shorts, walking across the gravel driveway carrying a bunch of weeds and a fistful of long grass.

Maisy thought about heading down to Mum to check on the latest possibility of an ice pop from the freezer, but then thought better of it on the basis of: A) she was supposed to be helping weed the driveway, and B) she’d only asked about ten minutes earlier.

She was missing her friends already, and school had only been out for three days. The weekend had felt the same as always, except for the end of term bbq party on Saturday night. She’d enjoyed spending the evening running barefoot around Jibi’s big garden, playing tag and wing-wang-woo with all the girls while the grown-ups chatted too much and drank too much wine, and the teenage boys hung around awkwardly, checking their cellphones every other minute. They played on until well after dark, hiding in the black shadows of the bushes and grabbing handfuls of salted peanuts from the table as they raced past and around the modern, detached house in its lovely, cultivated gardens.

On Sunday morning Jibi was setting off early with her Mum, Dad and little brother to the airport, heading off to visit family in India. That was the second reason for the bbq at theirs - hugs all round as they prepared to set off for a month, right at the start of the summer hols.

The impact of losing her best friend forever wasn’t felt on Saturday night, or even on the lazy Sunday with its visit to the tip with Dad, fabulous roast dinner, and evening bathtime. Even Monday felt like a weekend day, and she got up late and sat with a bowl of Chocco Doodahs in brown milk, re-watching yet another episode of Brazilian-teen-dance-horsey-soap opera ‘Obrigado!’

Now, two hours later, she was bored. Really bored. School nearly, very nearly but not quite really, seemed like a nice idea of something to actually do. She was missing the playground noise, and the laughter and chatter of her friends.

How long were the holidays again anyway? Was it five weeks or ten? Either way it was a lifetime - she wondered if they had ClipClop in India, as suddenly she desperately wanted to be with Jibi again, and failing that, then at least message her.