Chapter 37

“You have to go, sweetheart.”

“He’s—he’ll—Mum, he knows.”

“He would have found out anyway, honey. You were going to tell him—and even if you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been able to go out with him very long before he worked it out.”

“But—not like that.”

“I know,” Mum said soothingly, and stepped back to squeeze his shoulders. “But Kerry talked to him, and we both think he’s a nice enough boy. I don’t think he’s going to go telling all your friends.”

It wasn’t that. It weirdly, bizarrely, wasn’t that at all—although that was there, of course, in the background. It was…it was that Jude was going to look at him differently. Whatever had been starting up would be snuffed out, and Anton didn’t think he could go back to staring at that incredible smile while Jude dumped him, and found someone else—probably a girl, but worse if it was another boy, in a way—and moved on.

“Please.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but you’ve got to go to school.”