‘Got to go and help my dad with the house. I left the papers they wanted, and the T-shirts. Blue rucksack, in my tent. I’ll come back to pack up the tent later. OK?’

‘OK,’ Zoe said.

He frowned at her. ‘Don’t let them boss you, all right?’ He lifted her hand to his lips.

Was that a kiss? As he walked away across the wood, getting smaller and smaller, she held the fingers he had touched up to her cheek – they felt hot. Too agitated to lie still any longer, she got out of her sleeping bag and stood barefoot in the wet grass between the tents, to salute the sun through the trees, as she had been taught at school. She flicked an ant off the half-remaining blueberry muffin from yesterday and ate it. She looked up through the leaves at the sun. Then she went to Ravi’s tent. He had already put away his clothes and his sleeping bag. On the roll mat by the door was a bag. Inside was a stack of papers. There was a typed sheet, decorated with green star stickers. This is the scandal of today: Coalition’s Wanton Ecocidal Nonsense! CWEN! Consolidate Women’s Environment Now! CWEN! Come Women Engage Now! CWEN! Further down in the bag were some large folded sheets – banners. Zoe unfolded one. CWEN, it read, in big green, red and yellow letters—

JUDGE: You smuggled it all into the house that day?

STELLA: [Smiles] Operation CWEN. To begin with, yes, Zoe was partly a useful way to access her grandmother and her father; but she soon became one of us.

‘Now,’ said Stella, when she had woken up, peed, and forked the last of last night’s baked beans into her mouth, ‘before we get on to today’s true business, I want you both to know that I’m going to apply for university after all, even though it’s really mainland and corrupt. I think I’ll be able to teach them something.’

‘Of course you will,’ said Tara.

‘Let’s go swimming to celebrate,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s high tide, so it’ll be full of seaweed—’

She could see the disbelief on their faces.

‘You access the divine in cold seawater,’ she said.

‘Arguably not,’ said Tara.

But Zoe led them down the steep path to the beach. The tide was in, as she had said it would be, and as soon as her feet touched the sand, she pulled off her pyjamas, tied her curly seaweed hair up in a band, and pushed herself out into the sea, through the fronds of brown bladderwrack, which tickled her skin as she swam through them.

The other two followed her with shrieks. Tara dipped her head below the water and came up bellowing. Stella swam towards Zoe. ‘I love it,’ she said happily, her eyes golden.

They ran up and down on the sand to get warm.