‘It’s strong shit, quite trippy,’ the joint roller assured them all. He was an older boy with a leather jacket.

‘Yeah,’ said one of the unknown girls, earnestly.

‘Come on, let’s all go and dance together,’ said Georgie, suddenly impatient with the solemnity required of the smoking.

Back in the hall, Georgie took Helena’s hand and Helena grabbed Stephen’s. Cass skipped alongside. A song they all loved came on and the four of them swirled around and around, their hands linked, singing along:

… You’d laugh and run away

And I’d chase you through the meadow

Without you I’d die

Let’s never say goodbye

Oh, Lori …

It was the perfect summer song, with its carefree image of a boy riding his bicycle while the girl he loved balanced on the handlebars. The falsetto chorus lent it an innocence which would come to haunt them all whenever they heard it, in later life; when their lives grew, stretching like shadows thrown by that one long summer. Let’s never say goodbye. Already there were one or two boys at the disco who shunned such sugary pop: they were cultivating impressive glowers to sit beneath their peculiar coxcomb hairstyles and refused to dance unless something by the Stranglers came on, or the Sex Pistols. Then they’d make a particular point of moving energetically with their open cans of beer in their hands, welcoming the spewing foam that spilt out, darkening the fronts of their jeans. But for now Cass and Georgie and Helena and Stephen were happy to ignore the new cynicism, to twirl around each other, joyful and a bit giddy.

‘You will come and see me, won’t you, when I’m back in London?’ Helena asked Stephen, when he woke her early the next morning. She’d tried to play it cool with him, not to talk about the future, but lying next to the warm familiarity of his long, pale body she felt a flutter of panic at losing him. The imminent parting made him urgently dear to her, whereas the time of his proximity had been calmly fond.

‘’Course. I’ll be heading to London anyways, when I leave here,’ he said. He wouldn’t go to London and not call on her. ‘But you’ll be coming back this way to school, won’t you, after the summer?’

‘I know, but … I suppose we don’t know how long you’re here for?’

‘Well, the invitation was to help out on the farm over the summer, so that’s until the end of August, is it, I’d guess?’

‘I s’pose it is. Around then.’

‘There you go then,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the city.’