It’s so weird, thinking back to what I was like at this point. So full of ill-founded confidence, so desperate to appear cool and interesting at all times. For this whole first term, I saw Marek as a bit of an aspirational figure, I guess. Like Alice, he was clever and funny and sarcastic, and he seemed to have stepped straight out of Withnail & I, chain-smoking roll-ups in his moth-eaten pea coat. I’d bought one in the exact same style – I can actually see it now, through the gap in my wardrobe.

By second term, though – once I’d met Daphne – the Marek effect started to wear off. I began to realise that Daff and Harv were much more fun to hang out with. Mainly because when I was with them, I didn’t have to try so hard to be someone I wasn’t.

Daff shifts round to face me and sits cross-legged on the bed. She’s slipped her shoes off already, and she tucks her stripy-socked feet underneath her. Her curly hair is starting to wriggle free from her ponytail, and as she reaches up to retie it, she pushes her shoulders back and tilts her head, and for a moment, she looks so beautiful I can barely think straight.

This is just … mad. I mean: this is Daphne. I’ve known her fifteen years. Why the hell am I so nervous?

I plonk down opposite her, nearly spilling half my tea.

‘So, you’ve already got me figured out, then, have you?’ I say.

‘Yup.’ She grins. ‘Always late. Reads highly pretentious books. Bad at hiding in mazes. Good at making tea. That about sums you up, I reckon.’

‘Oh, great. Thanks a lot.’

‘No worries.’ She stretches her leg out and pokes me gently in the thigh with her big toe. It’s a gesture that’s so familiar – so relaxed and comfortable – that I’m suddenly seized by the idea that she knows. That this isn’t 2005 Daphne: it’s 2020 Daphne, and she’s inexplicably jumped back through time, too.

But as soon as that idea forms, it dissolves. Because the truth is: she was always like this. Right from the start. I remember it even on our first date. I made her laugh at one point, and she reached across and squeezed my hand. She was so intimate; like we’d known each other our whole lives.

She cranes her neck round to look out of the window, but she doesn’t move her leg away. She just leaves it there, with her foot still resting lightly on my thigh. She can’t possibly know the effect this is having on me – or at least I hope she doesn’t. It’s like a cement mixer has just been switched on in my stomach. All I can think about is leaning forward and taking her in my arms again.