"No. He bought me a dress to wear. And then we got stuck in the snow and ended up staying in a five-star hotel."

Silence.

"Lizzie?"

More silence.

"Lizzie?"

Even more silence.

"LIZZIE?"

"I'm here..." She was breathing heavily. "Sorry. I fell off my chair in excitement and it took me a while to find the receiver again."

I laughed.

"Seriously though, Poppy, is he a robot? Or has he read some kind of special 'how to be a perfect boyfriend' self-help book? And if so, can we buy multiple copies and plant them all around Middletown for other boys to read?"

That made me laugh again. "It's almost vom-inducing, isn't it?"

"Yes. It's disgusting. I hate you. I also want to hear everything."

"Well..." I started.

"Not over the phone. I want every last detail. Face to face. We're going sledging. You, me, Ruth, Amanda, maybe some of Johnno's mates. Come. And tell me everything then."

"Sledging?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Uh huh."

"We've never sledged before."

"Well, I figured, as it's quite clear the world is ending, it's something we should tick off the list before the Apocalypse."

"You really think it's the end of the world?"

"Yes. The weather always knows."

I opened my wardrobe drawer, trying to find something suitable for sledging. "It was just a storm, and then some snow."

"And the power cut."

"That wasn't anything to do with the weather."

"They still don't know what caused it."

"Hmm."

"And we've had an Indian summer."

"It's called global warming."

"It's called the Apocalypse. I read about it on the internet. It's something to do with giants and monks, and the calendar ending."

I looked at my reflection in the mirror, and practised raising an eyebrow.

"Well," I said, "if it IS indeed the end of the world, that's such a shame, because it means you'll never have the chance to grow up and be a proper journalist."

Lizzie went quiet.

"Well, maybe it's just the beginning of the end of the world. I'm sure we've still got a few years...decades...on our side."

"Of course."

"Meet us at top of the common at two-ish."

"Will do."

And then we hung up.

It was gorgeous walking up to the common in the snow. It had been transformed into the proverbial winter wonderland, each tree branch laden with a heavy layer of crisp ice. I'd never thought the common could be improved upon but, with snow wow. It was mind-blowing. It had snowed before in Middletown, but never this much, and I'd never gone up the common in it. Much as I whinged about living in boring suburbia, I did feel lucky right then. In London the snow had all gone by early morning, and everyone still had to go to work and college, but here we still had huge areas left unspoiled by footprints or cars.

Everyone was already at the top when I got there.

"Hello all," I yelled, waving at them.

They waved back. Everyone, like me, was wearing multiple layers and looked puffy and childlike. Even Ruth was wearing a bobble hat, her crimson hair peeking out. All their cheeks were pink, their mouths smiling, as if snow had a way of extracting happiness from even the most determined of mardy bums.

"Don't mention the hat," Ruth said when I got over to them. "I'm praying Johnno and his mates don't come, otherwise I'm going to have to take it off and get frostbite of the head."

Lizzie was wearing a parka I'd never seen before and had the fuzzy hood up.

"Isn't this great?" she asked, her breath coming out as frozen steam. "Look at our sledges."

I saw two tea trays and a rubber ring. "Those are not sledges."

"They'll do."

"You can go first then," Amanda said. She looked the most like a child in her numerous layers, her little face poking out from an array of scarves. "But first," she said. "I want to hear all about this ballet and hotel." She winked at me.

I turned to Lizzie.

"You told them!"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course I told them. Why are you even surprised?"

"Isn't it too cold for chatting?"

"Nope," Ruth said. She didn't appear bothered by the prospect of a Noah conversation. Maybe the snow really did wash away grumpiness. "Any reason to delay Lizzie pushing me over a cliff on that bloody tray."

"Alright then."

We stood shivering as I filled them in on the dress, the ballet, the snow, the hotel although I didn't mention the bed barrier or the fight. They gasped and squealed and, of course, demanded to come round and see The Dress.

"Wow," Amanda said. "I swear you are living in a movie, Poppy. I mean, this stuff doesn't happen in real life."

I knew it was true but I couldn't agree, as that would be big-headed, so I shrugged. "I just got lucky."

Ruth was a bit quiet.

"How are things going with you and Will?" I ventured, hoping she hadn't changed her mind and dumped him since I last saw her.

She smiled. "Yeah, great. You should see the outfit I've got for the gig. It's amazing!"

"It's still two weeks away and you've got an outfit already?"

She gave me a withering look, like I was a child still trying to work out how the world worked. "Poppy, it's a big gig. We have to come across as professional groupies."

I stuck my tongue out. "Ergh. I don't want to be a groupie. Can't I just be the girlfriend of the guitarist? They're lucky to have us, right?"

Ruth gave me the face again. "Fair enough. But if you don't sleep with Noah, trust me, there will be hundreds of girls willing to take your place."

"I'm willing to take that chance." My voice broke a little, showing my false confidence.

"I'm just saying."

I tried not to let her words bother me, but they did. They were probably supposed to.

"Come on," Lizzie said, breaking the tension as always. "Let's try out these sledges."

We all groaned but shuffled into position.

"How does this work?" I asked, straddling a tea tray.

Lizzie scratched her head with her mitten. "Erm, I'm not too sure. I think you just sit on it and push off with your feet."

I gingerly lowered my bottom onto it and put my feet up.

Nothing happened.

"Nothing's happening."

"Erm...maybe you need a push?"

"Okay. Be careful."

Lizzie gave me a tap. I still didn't move.

"Lizzie, that was pathetic. Push me harder."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Let's see what these things can do."

And before I knew it I was careering down the hill, screaming, with my hair flying behind me and snow flying over the tea tray into my face.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

I bumped over fox holes, swerved to avoid families walking their dogs, and arrived at the bottom of the hill far too quickly.

I got off, turned, and waved at my friends, who looked tiny at the top of the hill.

"ARE YOU ALIVE?!" Amanda called.

"YOU HAVE TO TRY THAT!" I called back.

The next few hours were spent running up and down the hill, taking it in turns to push each other. Johnno and his friends turned up and Ruth's hat magically vanished into her coat pocket. We turned sledging into a tournament and began racing the two trays. At one point we tried putting two people on one tray to see if the gravitational force (Johnno does physics) made us go faster. Unfortunately we tried this experiment using Amanda and one of Johnno's mates and she was too shy to hold onto him properly. This meant that halfway down the hill, she came flying off the tray and sailed through the air with an astonished look on her face, before face-planting into a massive snowdrift. As you can imagine, this led to A LOT of laughing, and soon the competition had evolved into seeing how many people you could fit on one tea tray.

As the fun continued, the upset from my stunted conversation with Ruth faded, although she'd reawoken that familiar paranoia I felt about Noah. The fact I wasn't going to be seeing much of him for a while certainly wouldn't help either. I tried to push it from my mind though.

Much too soon, the sky got darker and people began to go home. Lizzie and I walked back together.

"The snow's melting already," she whinged, kicking it up with her wellington boot. "Does that mean the end of the Middletown Winter Olympics?"

She was right. It was definitely turning into mush.

"At least it snowed enough for them to cancel college," I said. "It would've been rubbish if we were stuck inside all day."

"Ergh. College. I'm so behind in my coursework it's not even funny."

"Me too."

"Yeah right. You always say that but you always have it done."

"Not this time. I dunno. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to do anything at the moment."

Lizzie fluttered her eyelashes at me. "Is it because you're in luuuuurrrve?!"

I pushed her into a snowdrift. She squealed and struggled to get up, before emerging looking like a yeti.

"Ouch!"

"You look like the Snowman."