Although she’d never become sick of her own company before, increasingly Clancy found herself wandering next door to Dilys’s house with a book of cryptic crosswords. Dilys would work on one of her crafting projects and Clancy would read out a clue like, ‘Five letters – fish in a corner.’

Dilys would cry, ‘Angle!’ triumphantly, and Clancy would write it in. Luckily, she was faster than Dilys at Sudoku or her self-respect would have been completely shot.

She still enjoyed her solitary wanders along the clifftops – spangled with daisies and dandelions now – especially when she wanted to think, which she was doing a lot. On the last Friday in July she was just wondering if she’d ever get up the courage to actually jump from The Leap when she came upon Harry and Rory sprawled on the grass. Fully dressed rather than in their swim things, they were talking, their forearms over their eyes against the sun, which was beating down gloriously.

As she drew close she heard Harry say gloomily, ‘You know what my dad’s like. I just don’t think I can.’

Not wanting to overhear anything she wasn’t meant to, she called out to them. ‘Not jumping today, guys?’

They sat up abruptly, blinking as the sunlight hit their eyes. Harry shrugged. ‘Don’t feel like it.’

Rory didn’t even smile. Till now, Clancy hadn’t taken as much notice of Rory as she had of Harry, probably because most of the time Harry spoke for them both. Now she saw that Rory’s eyes were pink. She wondered whether she should just walk on, but a tiny spark of doubt made her pause. What if the boys were in trouble? They didn’t strike her as the kind to always make low-risk decisions.

‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked.

After shooting a look at Rory, Harry said, ‘Sure.’

Clancy tried to start a conversation but the boys weren’t chatty. Finally, prompted by Rory’s woebegone expression, she felt she had to say, ‘I know it’s nothing to do with me, but is something wrong? I’m quite good at puzzles and I might be able to help you figure it out.’

The lads gave matching shrugs. Then Harry looked at Rory, as if for permission, and muttered, ‘My dad’s pressuring me about uni.’

‘And you don’t want to go?’ Clancy asked sympathetically, wriggling into a more comfortable spot because the dry grass was prickling through her cut-offs. ‘I suppose loads of teenagers go through that kind of worry.’

Harry switched his gaze to the distant horizon where sea met sky. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Trouble is, I’m good at everything. I got ten GCSEs all A and A-star and four A levels, three As and a B. It’s like ten people all shouting different instructions at once. It’s paralysing. I can’t think through all the noise to pick a subject.’

Rory lifted his head. ‘You do know what you want to do. You want to do design. Conceptualise. I could never come up with ideas out of nowhere like you do.’