I’m lucky enough to be one of those people who doesn’t really like sweet stuff. I’d rather eat sushi than lollies and snacking on brownies has never been my idea of a fun way to spend an afternoon. Tiramisu once a year on my birthday is my cake-fix limit.

But Shannon wasn’t like that. She liked chocolate and sugar. A lot.

It wasn’t obvious at first. When they chose her to be part of the group, she was almost as skinny as me. But as the year went on, her bottom got bigger and bigger. I never actually saw her with a chocolate bar in her mouth, but Samantha said that apparently her bin at home was full of wrappers. You name it, she ate it.

Year Seven ended and the holidays came and went and when we got back to school, Shannon was looking chubby. Well, actually, I’ll be honest. She wasn’t much chubbier than most people in our Year. In fact if you met her for the first time, you would probably say she was normal sized, but in comparison to the year before, she’d put on heaps of weight.

And it was too much for Saffron, Tiger, Lise and Isabella. At the end of week five, they dropped her, and they dropped her hard. One day she was walking around the playground with them, and the next she was sitting on a bench on her own with a red face, looking like she’d been crying.

I felt sorry for her. We were back in English together and on the third day after she had been dropped she was still crying. The word had got around the school that no one was supposed to talk to her or Tiger would have something to say to them. She was on her own.

But when someone sitting opposite you is crying in class, it doesn’t really matter about all that. You want to give them a hand, right?

Besides, it was safe that day. None of the popular girls were in the same class as us and even Sam, who I knew wouldn’t have approved of me being nice to Shannon, just because it went against what Tiger had said, was away.

“Are you okay?” I whispered when the teacher turned around.

Shannon looked up, surprised. She sniffed and then looked helplessly around her so I dug in my bag for a tissue. It was a bit crumpled but it was still unused and she didn’t seem to mind.

“Thanks,” she said and gave me a weak smile but her eyes were welling up again, so I pulled the whole packet out and put it on her desk.

From that point on, whenever I saw her, I gave her a secret smile. I wasn’t quite brave enough to do it openly and go against Saffron and Tiger Lily but it seemed a bit sad that someone should have no friends in the whole world so I did what I could.

Samantha had absolutely no sympathy for her at all.

“Well it’s her own fault,” she said. “If she wasn’t so piggish, she wouldn’t have got so fat and then she wouldn’t have got dropped. I mean, it’s simple. You keep your mouth shut if you don’t want to put on weight. She must’ve known what would happen.”

I nodded. When you put it like that, of course it was true, but the part of me that loves kittens and puppies still felt sorry for Shannon and I wasn’t about to tell Samantha. She was busy obsessing about who was going to replace Shannon.

Because Saffron and Tiger were holding auditions.