We stare at each other for a long moment. God, Taylor looks scary holding that branch, with her muscles bulging. She’s wearing a white tank top with the wide straps of a sports bra showing at her neck, and loose green combat trousers hanging off her hips. I can see a flash of an incredibly flat and muscular stomach showing between the T-shirt and the trousers. She looks like a U.S. Marine, or an action heroine—the Lara Croft of teenage girls. After what feels like hours, she lets the branch fall to the ground. I’m very relieved to hear it land.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask.

“I could see your T-shirt,” she says. “Next time you come sneaking through the woods, wear something that blends in better than bright red, okay?”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” I say indignantly. “You were making a racket I could hear from miles away. No wonder I wanted to see what was going on.”

“I wasn’t that loud,” Taylor says, but I have her on the defensive now.

“Yes, you were. You were grunting like a wild boar.”

“I was not!” She’s furious. Her eyes narrow. “So what are you doing here? I expect you’ve got a key to the gate, because you’re, like, the granddaughter of the stately home, or something?”

“There’s a gate?”

Taylor jerks her head back, indicating the far side of the woods. “Back there,” she says. “Don’t tell me you climbed the wall.”

“Oh right,” I say sarcastically, “like you’re the only person who can climb anything, I suppose. At least I didn’t give myself rope burn.”

“I only got rope burn because I was coming down fast to see who was spying on me.”

“I wasn’t spying on you!”

“Right. That’s why you walked right out into the open and said ‘hello,’ I guess.”

“Oh, forget it.” I’m angry too, because she’s caught me. I suppose I was spying on her a bit. I turn on my heel to go.

“Wait a minute,” Taylor says sharply. “You’d better not tell anyone about seeing me here.”

If she’d just asked me nicely, or not said anything at all, just taken it for granted that I wouldn’t tell on her  .  .  . that would have been fine. But the threatening tone of her voice makes me want to kick her in the shins.

Instead I just walk away.

“Don’t you dare tell anyone!” Taylor shouts after me. “I mean, it, Scarlett!”

“I’d cross my fingers if I were you!” I shout back.

Of course I’m not going to run to a teacher and tell her that Taylor’s climbing a rope in the woods. What kind of suck-up does she think I am? But equally, I’m not going to reassure her if she’s going to be that nasty and suspicious.

She can just sweat it out for a while, till she realizes I’m not going to tell. I hope it makes her really nervous.

Serves her right for being such a grumpy cow.

I look at the envelopes, lying on the bed next to me. One is bulging slightly. Well, it would. Two hundred and fifty pounds, in ten-pound notes, make a pretty big wodge of cash. And the other one  .  .  . the other one is practically flat. Again, that makes sense. All it has inside is one folded sheet of paper.

I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to do this or not.

I pick the two white envelopes up and slide them into a bigger one, a brown manila envelope, fiddling the metal tongue through the little hole, pushing it down to close the flap. And my brain slides off suddenly into one of its weird tangents, the way it does when I’ve been really good with my diet and I get a bit dizzy and feel like I’m floating a foot off whatever surface I’m supposedly on.

Why are they called “manila” envelopes? my brain is asking. Did they get invented in Manila? And where is Manila, anyway? Is it some town in Portugal? I’m assuming it’s a place, but it might be a person, mightn’t it? Some man named Carlos Manila who invented brown envelopes?

Oh God, it’s like my head is getting sucked into a spin cycle.  .  .  . I can’t write anymore, my hand is shaking.  .  .  .

Okay, I’m back. I did that meditation exercise my therapist taught me. I visualized a washing machine slowing down. I completely focus on watching it through the little glass window. I see the drum. It’s making that clanking noise as it turns slower and slower. The spin cycle’s ending. The drum comes to a complete halt. I watch it for a minute to make sure it doesn’t move again.

Phew.

It’s not exactly hard to see how nervous this is making me. Is it a bad idea? Should I just undo the manila envelope, rip open the one with the cash, and put it back in my wallet? And shred the other envelope?

I think about that, but the trouble is, when I imagine that picture it makes me feel even worse. Even more panicky and spin-cycley. And guilty. Much, much more guilty.

And as my therapist says, if there’s one emotion that’s really toxic for me, it’s guilt.