When I was fourteen, after Joe had gone, after I dared believe it was for good, I had stopped going to school for a while. I found other companions, other ways to have fun. When I came back, I’d expected the crevasse between me and Peter to disappear, but it didn’t. Half the time it was like he wasn’t even there, like he was off somewhere in his own head, and he never wanted it to be just us, just me and him. If I suggested we go off on our own, he made excuses. At first, I’d thought he was punishing me for disappearing, but it wasn’t that. It was like I wasn’t safe anymore. That was how he’d treated me, and even now the unfairness of it made my eyes sting so I had to stare hard out the van window at the blurring hedgerows.

On the high street, Marcus pulled up and Em and Peter got out. Em had choir and despite my threats of rivers of lava and Death on a white horse, she’d pledged to go out with a handful of old ladies singing Queen medleys. We were the same height, but that’s where the similarity ended. She was a fawn, Em. Not a pick over seven stone, and all fringe, eyelash, and skinny leg to my tits, arse, and lip. The same guys who at school shouted at me to get my tits out got tongue-tied around her, but I could never push her around.

“Em?”

“Not possible.” It was what she always said when she didn’t want to do something. A sad shake of the head, a sigh. “Not possible.”

“Pete, we pick you up at eight?”

“I’m going to stay home and revise. I’ve got that last exam, remember.”

“Pete, please!” It was Peter I wanted really. It always was. Games weren’t the same without him. “It’s the end of the world.” But he shook his head. He wasn’t playing anymore.

We went for a drive, stopping for a pint in the beer garden of the Red Lion at Avebury where we could look out at the stone circle. Marcus had a shandy because he was driving.

“You could get drunk if you wanted to. Won’t matter if there’s no tomorrow.”

“If I got caught driving Darren’s van pissed, I’d be praying for the apocalypse.” He looked away. I had the sense he was tired of it, that he wanted me to let it drop. But that wasn’t quite it.