I laugh. I can hear myself and it’s one of those hysterical too-loud laughs that goes on for a beat longer than is comfortable as I wait for Deborah to join in. She doesn’t, though, just watches me with a look of sombre concern as the sound dies in my throat and the whole bookshop becomes very, very still.

I look between them. First Deborah, then left to Dev and right to Esen. Why aren’t they saying anything? Even Esen’s smug smile has softened to something that takes me a second to recognise. Pity, I realise, the back of my neck burning. She feels sorry for me. But why? I mean, this is a joke, right?

‘Listen, Ash,’ Deborah says and there’s a firmness to it – an impatience – that feels a little like being told off. I look frantically around the bookshop, my gaze bouncing off the shelves then down to the floor and up to the ceiling and over to the counter as I feel it again – the dread – spreading up my arms, working its way across my scalp to make the hair on my head bristle until I am aware of each one. I’m not sure what I’m looking for.

A crucifix?

A huddle of candles?

A framed print of the Sacred Heart like the one my parents have by our front door?

I look at Dev then, at her sweet face and sweet smile and sweet pink cheeks, and she has this dreamy sort of expression on her face – almost glazed – and my scalp shivers again as a thought needles at me, burrowing under my skin like a splinter.

Is this one of those conversion things? I saw a documentary about it last year, about parents who send their kids to Christian camps in America to get the gay out of them. Is that what Deborah meant when she said that I’m dead? Not dead in the literal sense, but spiritually. Did my mother do this? Did she tell someone at church that I was gay and they promised to fix me? She wouldn’t, would she? When I told her about Poppy, she seemed OK with it. And why would she have been so keen for me to get home tonight if she knew I was coming here?

Maybe this is nothing to do with her. Maybe this is some sort of weird cult. Maybe Dev saw me on the beach with Poppy, followed me and brought me back here.

I turn my cheek towards Deborah again, my fingers digging into my palm so hard I don’t know how I don’t draw blood this time. I wait for her to say it, for her to tell me that she can help me.

Save me.

But she just meets my gaze head-on when I ask, ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m here to help you, Ash.’

I don’t believe her.