Almost as soon as they arrived at Hamish’s house, Cass disappeared into the crowd. Georgie stayed by his side as they went to find drinking glasses to fill with the cider they’d brought. On the kitchen table there were big glass jugs topped with fresh mint and slices of fruit. On the side, by the glasses, were several empty bottles of the Pimm’s and lemonade which had gone into the pitchers.

‘Ooh, I love Pimm’s, let’s ditch the cider and have that instead,’ said Georgie.

‘What is it?’ said Stephen.

‘It’s a kind of summer fruity drink. Made with gin, I think. It’s not very strong.’

She poured long glasses for them both and they wandered through the rooms. There seemed to be quite a crowd. Hamish went to a different school from Cass and Georgie, and many of the guests were his schoolfriends; a crowd that no one knew but him. The dining-room table had been moved back along the wall and the room thronged. Some people Georgie knew were in the sitting room, playing records and chatting.

Stephen realized something wasn’t right when the drums seemed to be louder and more insistent than the guitars or the singing. It wouldn’t have seemed off to him, except that this was Led Zep, and weren’t they all intricate, winding guitar arrangements and plaintive, wailing vocals? It was the song about the Vikings, with dark-sounding lyrics about Valhalla and Norse Gods and bringing ships to new lands. He’d never noticed the drums on it before. He’d never known drums be so … well, so interesting. They seemed to keep coming in at the last possible split second, so that the guitars were nearly bolting away beforehand, only reined in at the very precipice of chaos by the drums. The drums were like the cavalry, rescuing desperate troops on the hill of battle. He wished he could play the song again. He wished he could fall into the drums like falling into a pool.

He couldn’t remember how long they’d been sitting there. Had they played both sides of the Led Zeppelin? What had they been listening to before that? But now the music had stopped while someone flicked through a box of albums; and without the jumble of sounds to attend to, the feeling lost its auditory magic and became unmistakable. It was acid.

‘Georgie?’ he said. His voice sounded as if it was coming from somewhere other than his own head. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I feel weird, actually,’ she said.

‘I think that punch must’ve had something in it,’ said Stephen.

Georgie didn’t respond. He could see her as if through a magnifying glass, folding in upon herself.

Her whole being seemed like one of those time-lapse films of a flower opening, only she was doing it in reverse.