People had been talking to us about the future ever since we could remember, particularly in Peter’s case, of whom great things were expected. The idea of deleting it, and ending its hold over us, was worth exploring. In the van, wreathed in smoke, nostrils filled with the smell of grease and oil and the tang of hash, we talked about what we’d do. Who would die painfully. What we’d steal. The things we’d try, mostly things we’d seen people do on TV that were supposed to be fun. There was an edge of hysteria to our laughter. Em had to scramble out, bent over at ninety degrees, and pee behind one of the back wheels, getting thistled in the arse in the process.

They would have let it drop, however, had it not been for me. The apocalypse called out to something lodged under my skin, the longing for destruction perhaps, for erasure—of everything, of everyone, especially myself.

We dropped off Peter at the vicarage and Em at her family’s cottage on the Hungerford road, and then Marcus and I drove into the Savernake Forest, ancient woodland where Henry VIII had once hunted, home to deer, walkers, and courting couples, site of murders, and rumored wandering place of a headless horsewoman. We parked the van and walked out to the Big Bellied Oak, climbing up till we reached a seat among its thousand-year-old branches. A little starlight crept through the new leaves. I thought of dead stars, dead events, all their rage consumed millions of years ago, just a memory of fire reaching out across the universe, and for the first time since the punch I felt better, more normal, and not like my hands were twitching to strangle someone.

“You all right?”

I nodded. Marcus had a chivalrous streak. He was protective. Only a month ago, he’d sent Greg Martin sprawling for trying to put his arm around me. But my mum was a woman, and by Marcus’s code you never hit women, never lifted a finger against them. His uncle said men who did that were no better than dogs. Still, better not to say anything.

“Just stoned,” I said.

“Me too.” With one arm gripping a branch, Marcus leaned in to kiss me. His mouth was warm and tasted, not unpleasantly, of cigarettes.

We’d been going out a year, since I’d heard rumors of a girl out at Bishopstone who liked him. It wasn’t just the prospect of losing the lifts, or my Saturday job at his uncle’s office, or the fact that with Marcus around no one dared give Peter any trouble, not in the roughest of pubs. I liked Marcus, although it was sometimes hard, with all the other stuff in the balance, to know how much.