“This makes you feel bad?” David turned on his side and laid the fingers of one hand on my stomach. The thing was, it should have, but it didn’t.

Three weeks? Less than a month certainly. Going back nights, waiting until Peter would have departed to meet his curfew. Then threading my way across the Downs, the rabbits bolting, the stretch through the copse, Crow Wood, lightless, where the night was thicker, heart picking up—the feeling of a presence there, nothing human, nothing in time—then down over the field, over the gate. The lawn wet. Looking for a light in the window.

I wouldn’t have given the journey up. Going through the dark alone to find another person, even if they were crooked and not offering anything.

“Here, I’m over here.”

My body drenched, the fear melting when he kissed me. It was like my heart was in a lift, and the lift would suddenly just fall, and then judder to a stop, and then fall some more. On the bed, in the darkness, I pressed down on David’s hands, my hair falling to cover his face, and I didn’t recognize my own voice.

One morning, slipping back in at five, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table. My lips were tender, my whole skin felt raw. She looked up slowly, her face blank. Nothing dawned in her eyes. It was like she didn’t know me from Adam.

Maybe I didn’t know me either.

Who else knew? Em with her keen eyes? I watched Marcus go for a guy who squeezed up against me in a pub and thought maybe. Peter? A cold stream flowing between us, a bewildered, hurt look that made me wince. Not enough to stop.

“There’s jobs on the Greek islands. Bar jobs. Not now, but in summer. You can make good money.” I was testing the waters, not sure I could leave, even if David agreed to it. What would become of my mother without me?

“How much?”

“A few grand at least.”

David grimaced. He got up swiftly from the bed and went over to the window. I knew what he was thinking. David had spent a lot of time around rich people, at the fancy houses and holiday homes of school friends. It was where he felt he belonged. It wasn’t the money, he said, it was what it bought you, which was freedom. The freedom not to worry all the time, to not test the smoke alarm on Sunday mornings or write down everything you eat and spend in a book.

“How much would the diamonds be worth, do you think, Andy?”

But he came back. Lying down beside me, our fingers lacing. His lips on my collarbone.

When I awoke, David was gently shaking my shoulder.

“Is it time to go?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“You cry in your sleep.”

“I was crying?”

“You’ve done it before.”