So, then it happened. Peter Bridges pulled into the bus bay. You’re not allowed to do that. Peter was in my year but I hardly ever saw him at school. He was on the football team, though he had almost been kicked off more times than I could count, for fighting and not showing up to training. His car was the cheapest-looking Toyota Corolla I had ever seen in my life. Hey Hamish, he said, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out how it was that he could possibly know my name. Want a ride home?

When Charlie Parker dies it affects everyone who knew him. Everyone, that is, except for Hamish Day, the boy with only one friend, who lives on a cabbage farm. After a tragic car accident leaves his school in grief, Hamish finds himself pulled into the lives of the people left behind. He tries his best to thread them back together again, even though he is pretty sure he’s the least qualified person for the job.

With hard-hitting themes of unrequited love, sexuality, bullying, death and suicide, readers will take part in a poignant story about self-discovery, grief and the tragic power of silence. A gripping look at adolescent pain with a narrative maturity that accurately reflects its YA milieu, I Had Such Friends pushes us to reflect on our own ‘sliding doors’ moment.

Who are you to someone else, and what part do you play in his or her story?