"I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

I got this text message from Cheryl half an hour ago and that's what it said, and now she's standing in front of me looking mad.

"I tell you everything you cow!" she shrieks. I put a finger in front of my mouth. "Ssh!" I hiss, I don't want my mum to burst in here and I don't want her to start asking Cheryl what I haven't told her; what I haven't told anyone.

"What are you talking about?"

I've taken hold of her hands and made her sit down on my bed. She's not looking at my eyes, she's staring at my poster of Vaserys and it looks as if she is trying not to cry. SHIT, I love Cheryl, but I didn't think she cared so much about me. Is she that worried about my stupid eating and how can I explain it to Cheryl, size 8 beautiful, gorgeous Cheryl – Cheryl the girl who often picks up a chocolate bar, eats one piece and puts it down again BECAUSE SHE IS FULL.

"I can't believe you kept such a big secret from me, I tell you everything!" Cheryl repeats.

"Look, I know it's just hard to talk about sometimes and it makes me feel bad, and I'm so sorry I didn't tell you Cheryl, I'm so sorry but", I'm babbling now, I just want her to stop looking so weepy. I get up off the bed and pull out some tissues from my desk.

"Here, your mascara is starting to run," I tell her; that should stop her crying as Cheryl hates to look anything less than perfect. "Don't wipe too hard," I say, "or your fake lashes will come off."

"When did it start?" Cheryl asks.

I sit down beside her again – at least she is looking at me now. I didn't want to have to go into this. The whole thing takes up so much space in my own head sometimes I don't know if there is any room for anything else. If I let it out of my head, what will happen? Where will it all go?

For a minute, I have these crazy thoughts. I imagine those thoughts of food (the food that takes up so much space in my brain) streaming out of my head as black, poisonous gas that swirls round the people in front of and around me, and they are swallowing mouthfuls of this gas, choking, turning blue and dropping to the floor. It's horrifying.

But Cheryl is my best friend. Can I trust the black gas not to kill her?

"Do you want a fag?" I ask and she nods. I go back to my desk and stick my hand in the drawer right at the back to find our secret stash (Cheryl keeps hers inside a tampon box in her bedroom). I take out one, seeing as neither of us like smoking, but Cheryl does it to look cool and I do it because I read somewhere smoking curbs your appetite. (It friggin' doesn't...)

I open my bedroom window as far as possible and beckon Cheryl over so the pair of us are leaning right out of it. I spark up. First drag to Cheryl, then one for me – the smoke drifts out of the window away from us.

"When I was 13," I say.

"WHAAAATTTT!" Cheryl is back shrieking, so I ssh her again.

"Friggin' 13!" she hisses, "what a bloody perv! That's disgusting!"

Hold on hold on hold on... I heard the 'disgusting' thing first, and I thought 'yup that's right, not having any kind of control over how much food you stuff into your gob is disgusting' and then I heard the 'perv' bit. What's she talking about?

"What do you mean?" I say, "do you mean...?"

"Yes I mean the teacher you write about! It's Mr Adams isn't it, the English teacher? But he wasn't at the school when we were 13. Did you know him before he came to the school then, god no bloody wonder he liked you so much."

Oh shit. Shit, shit shit. Of course, I know all Cheryl's passwords because I've been updating her Twitter and Instagram accounts, and Cheryl knows all my passwords too. She must have looked at my blogger account.

The cigarette is back in my hand and the smoke continues to drift out over the roof and away from the two of us.

I don't know if I'm relieved or not because there's a big part of my head screaming – great, great, great she doesn't know about the eating stuff, thank fanny flibberty I don't have to explain about that...

Knowing all the stuff I've written on the blog is a bit frightening though. I started it a few months ago after I'd won that teenwriters competition. I'd enjoyed getting published and I liked the thought that people liked reading what I wrote; if I wrote about a teenage love affair I kind of knew there would be a lot of people who would want to read about it.

I thought up a fake name and I used my usual password. I told Cheryl about blogging when I started it, but I didn't think she would pay it any attention because she's not bothered about blogging.

Thing is, though, she's got thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram and I've kind of built up lots of followers of my blog. I think my followers are all pervs because they like reading about a teenage girl having an affair with an older man – and I get some gross comments from a lot of people about being a naughty girl they would love to meet – so my blog is now popular. The last time I looked, I'd had around 90,000 page views. The post where I wrote about when we were in that little hidden away park that time and things... happened, let's say, was the most popular.

"What were you talking about then?" Chezza asks. I waft the smoke away as it has started to drift back in through the window.

"Oh... nothing," I shrug, "but you gotta promise me you won't tell anyone about me and Mr A? It's a secret, right? I haven't put his name or my name anywhere on the blog. I haven't said the school name or even this city. We'd both get so much grief."

Cheryl takes another drag and splutters a bit, before handing the fag back to me. "S'pose, but you'd better spill all bitch."

"Well, you read all about it didn't you?" she nods. I'm quite surprised to be honest. As I said, Cheryl doesn't do reading. "So you know all about it then."

Cheryl elbows me in the ribs. "Ha ha smart arse. No I fucking don't know everything. Like, how you keep it a secret?"

"It's hard," I say. "You know- oh, I can't say this..."

"WHAT? Tell me!"

"You'll think I'm sad," I say, but Cheryl shakes her head furiously. "I won't I won't – just tell me."

"Well, I didn't put this in the blog, but I love him Chezza. He's so gorgeous and he's nothing like the lads in our year. Older men are so grown up you know, and he makes me feel so special. Sometimes I just want to shout it out when we are in class. It's so difficult to keep quiet about it all the time."

"Aww," Cheryl grins, "that's so romantic! Me and Danny – well, I thought I maybe loved him, but he's boring to be honest and all we do is have sex. I do it a lot just to stop him talking 'cause everything that comes out of his gob is complete shit.

"But he's married in't he?" Cheryl asks, getting back to the tricky subject of Mr A.

I sigh; shit this has all got so bloody complicated.

"His wife's older than him. I mean, she's, like, 50. Can you believe that? He says she's no fun anymore."

"Do you think he'll leave her for you?" Chezza asks. "I could run off with Matt and you could run off with Mr A. I know!" she grasps my hand in excitement. "I could ask Matt to get him an acting job – Matt'd be able to do that dead easy cause he's, like, dead famous and he could get him some bit part in a film, and then he could be an actor again 'cause y'know that being a school teacher is shit – god, who'd want to do that when you could be famous?

"Then we could both be girlfriends of famous Hollywood actors, going to all these parties and living in these huge houses and someone would want to do a reality programme about us both, and all these companies would give us free clothes and make-up and shit."

"Steady on, Chezza," I say, though it would be stupid to pretend that wild fantasies aren't a regular part of my imagination. "Jumping the gun a bit."

She sticks her tongue out. "I'm gonna dump Danny anyway," she says. "He's nobody and he's a loser."

From Hot New Lad to loser.

"It's not just because of Matt," she adds. "When I was reading your Mr A stuff I was jealous. Sooooo romantic."

Ah, she must have read the blog from the other day, the one when Mr A and I were talking about the perfect weekend. It went like this...

I'd been a bit late for the lesson so when I got to Mr A's class, I was panting hard and sweating slightly.

"There you are!" he'd rounded on me as soon as I came in, and he'd come over and pulled me to him fiercely. As I said, I had been warm and I had squirmed a little – worried that he could feel how sweaty I was – but he had pulled me tighter. It was the first time he had started one of our extra lessons with a hug. I relaxed into and eventually my heartbeat slowed down and my breathing returned slowly.

"I thought you weren't coming," he breathed into my hair.

"No, never," I said into his chest. "I was held up–"

"Ssh," his voice sounded husky, "Ssh, no need to tell me because you're here now." He reached behind me and pulled the blinds on the room shut. His lips greedily sought out mine and I tipped my face up.

I was thrilled – a kiss, and in this situation! When there were still so many people about, so many people and so many other teachers who could burst in on us at any second. Part of me wanted them too, see, see what we are doing, see what he thinks about me, look at this wonderful, wonderful love. The other part of me realised the danger, as did he and he pulled apart a minute or so later.

"Sorry, sorry – that was wrong of me. I shouldn't have done that. I just– just miss you so much when you aren't here."

A switch seemed to go on in his brain and he gestured to me to take a seat. Business-like and a teacher again. "Come on then, how did you get on with that piece I set you?"

I reached round to take my rucksack off and drew the notebook out of my bag.

"Do you miss me?" I asked, I felt shy suddenly handing over my essay.

"Sav, you know how I feel about you, don't you?" he said, taking the essay from me. "Do you need me to say it over and over again?"

Yes, I do actually. You can't say enough. Keep saying it.

"Or," and he put the essay down, "I could tell you what my perfect weekend would be like. Do you want to know?"

I nodded, puzzled about where this was going.

"Well, in my perfect world you and I go away for a weekend together. We get in my car and we drive north. We find this little village where no-one knows us and we go to stay in a little cottage. There's no phones, no TV and no internet. We're completely alone, we've got plenty of food and we've got books and we've got each other..."

With a quick glance at the windows to make sure the corridors are deserted, he leaned over and took hold of my chin, tipping my face up so that I was looking in his eyes. He lowered his voice.

"... and then what do you think we would do all weekend Sav?"

And then he told me exactly what we would do all weekend. In detail. It made me feel good inside and so excited, wondering – hoping – that sometime soon we could escape together for a weekend, and find this tiny village where no-one knew who we were.

"Do you still need me to tell you how much I miss you then, when we're not together?"

I shook my head. Nope.

Cheryl still looks as if she is sighing over what I wrote.

"Danny never tells me stuff like that," she says as she lights up another cigarette and takes a long drag sucking it in before blowing it out quickly. (Neither of us like smoking.)

"He's doesn't speak that much," she adds, "but Mr A's so fab isn't he? I wish Danny would make up stuff like what he thought our weekends would be like 'stead of just grunting at me or trying to get my knickers off."

I take the cigarette away from her and take a drag in myself (it's true, smoking does stop you eating – for a while anyway). I take a few more puffs and then stop as I can feel my heart racing, uncomfortably fast – like it often does when I've made myself puke.

I feel panicky: is it a good thing or a bad thing that Cheryl's seen this?

"You promise to God you won't say anything? Swear Chezza – on Matt Rogan's life? Promise, promise?"

I walk over to her and take hold of her hand, placing it on my fast-beating heart.

"You MUST promise!"

"Course," she says. "Cross my heart and hope to die."

I don't know if I believe her to not, but I've got no choice.

ALL COMMENTS (563)

WTF? You heard the stuff about this guy? Fucking perv.

Yeah, heard it, Durty bastard.

Washed-up actor, it's the only action he can get these days.

Shut the fuck up. You read the stuff? It's dreeaammyyy....