I breathe really slowly and look into space with a bit of a smile as if I’m remembering something funny, or I just don’t care. When I’m most nervous, a kind of steel closes over my skin. I think it’s because there is no difference: we’re all faking it. But from the outside you can’t tell the difference between them and me. I know how to fake it and I can pass as one of them. The ones who don’t hate their bodies, the ones who aren’t afraid to say what they really think.

You know those people who look like they know what they’re doing? Confident people. So I can’t tell what Paul says that makes her sigh and sound so sad, but her reply is perfectly clear: ‘Cassidy won’t be living with us forever.’ Suddenly my mum’s voice becomes very close – she must have moved to the side of the room where we share a wall. I’m not a kid any more and there’s no way she can be okay with me being unhappy. If she realises things are not working she’s going to have to tell him to go. In a way, I’m quite glad about that because I can see him for what he is and for some reason she can’t. I argued with him earlier, so I know this might be about me. So I lie down and pull my quilt around me and try to hear her side of the conversation – his voice is too fuffly and mumbly. I am this close, this close to going in and screaming at him and telling him to get out and leave us alone and never come back. It’s only half past five, and I would be asleep if it weren’t for the man telling my mum off in the next room. Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988Ī catalogue record for this book is available Of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with The right of Kate le Vann to be identified as Author Recording or otherwise, without the prior Reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyįorm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, Thanks to everyone at Piccadilly Press for theirĪll rights reserved. le Vann’s sensitive, perceptive prose will make it enduring.” “Told with a good deal of light humour and a credible voice, Two Friends, One Summer charts Sam’s journey to a realisation that instant gratification is not all, and that some things are worth waiting for.”īooks for Keeps, on Two Friends, One Summer

The endearing and completely credible relationship with her brother is delightful and the moving and gentle awareness of a real relationship developing gives an added layer to the sensitivity of the whole novel.” Jan Mark, Books for Keeps, on Tessa in Love “One of the finest evocations of young love that I have ever read – subtle, delicate and utterly moving.” Kate le Vann has already had published four highly acclaimed novels for teenagers: Tessa in Love, Things I Know About Love, Two Friends, One Summer and Rain.

Tessa in Love by Kate le Vann