Marek slaps his glass down. ‘Not achievable, I’m afraid, because most people are idiots. I mean, seriously: can you name one decent writer – in any genre – who’s also commercially successful?’

Daff takes a deep breath and starts counting them off on her fingers. ‘Nora Ephron, Stephen King, Sue Townsend, Armando Iannucci …’ She puffs her cheeks out. ‘That’s four, for a start.’

There’s a beat of embarrassed silence while we all watch Marek consider arguing that these good and successful writers are not good and successful. In the end, he gives up and reaches for a Big Lebowski quote: ‘Well, that’s just like … your opinion, man,’ he drawls.

Daphne holds up a fifth finger. ‘Ah, yeah, and the Coen brothers. Thanks. That’s five. Or six, if we’re counting both of them.’

There are a few laughs at this, and Marek takes out his phone and starts jabbing at it to indicate that the conversation is over.

‘Sorry about that,’ Daphne murmurs to me, not looking in the least bit sorry. ‘I hope I didn’t upset your friend.’

‘He’s not really our friend,’ Harv whispers, leaning across. ‘He’s more a bell-end that happens to live on our corridor.’ Daphne laughs hard at this, and Harv stands up to address the whole table. ‘Right, I’m getting more shots. Who’s in?’

‘Fuck shots,’ says Marek, snapping his phone shut and assuming leadership once again. ‘Let’s play Sardines!’

Chapter Ten

A dozen chairs scrape backwards noisily, and the cries of ‘Yes!’ and ‘Let’s do it!’ instantly drown out the Kaiser Chiefs’ riot predictions on the stereo.

I can feel beads of sweat starting to prickle on my brow, so I excuse myself and barge through the last-orders throng at the bar, towards the bathroom.

I slip into a cubicle and slump down on top of the toilet lid, my heart pounding in my chest. Playing Sardines in the campus maze was an end-of-term Drama Soc tradition, one that Marek had always insisted we should keep up tonight. But this evening’s game represents something way more significant than a bit of random boozy fun: it was the first time Daphne and I ever kissed.

I take a deep breath and try again to make some sense of the situation. I’ve spent the past half-hour being reminded of how brilliantly Daff and I once got on; how right we once seemed for each other. But while I may not have a clue why this is all happening, one thing I do have is hindsight. And that means I now know exactly how we’ll end up. How far we’ll eventually drift from our hopeful, happy, seemingly perfect-for-one-another teenage selves.