His office had a window which gave on to a car park, behind which was the cinema, a building that, until comparatively recently, had represented the very pinnacle of adulthood for Kath, Pauline and Zoe on the nights when they managed to get into 18s. Beyond the cinema was the main road, and on the other side of that was the hospital where Zoe was born.

Concentrate on the good things, the man said, the first time, and so Zoe pressed her fingers into the blue settee, with its rough fabric pattern like corrugated cardboard, and tried to think. What were the good things? She didn’t want to be talking to this man. She wanted to be back on the beach, walking and looking.

The air in the therapist’s room smelt faintly of the breath of people who ate curry last night for tea. The man sat looking at her. What would he do, if she told him the good things? She hadn’t said anything yet. He continued to wait. He was young but not handsome and was dressed like a teacher.

Try and recall the last pleasant thing you did together, the man said. Zoe watched a white van with blue lettering on its side draw into the car park and cruise around twice, looking for a space. She glanced back at the man, who was looking at her with a little frown between his eyes. Obediently, to show that she was taking his words seriously, she shifted on the settee, turning her body away from the window. She looked at the man’s desk, which was fake wood with one locking drawer on the left like the teachers’ desks at school, but with nothing on it.

Can you think of one nice thing you did together? said the man, looking at her with his blinky-blue eyes. There were only nice things. And she didn’t want to think of them because from now on—

RUTH: She began going out, to parties. A bit defiant.

The day the new mural of Eva was defaced, Zoe went to Tommy Marsden’s party at his house in Ayrness. His parents had gone to Berwick for the weekend. She hated the whispers, the boys asking if you were OK, the girls who stopped talking when you walked by. But if she stayed home she would sleep, and if she slept, she would dream, and then when she woke—

At Tommy’s house there were vodka bottles, whisky, beer and cider. Zoe drank several quite evil cocktails very fast and was sick for what seemed like hours into Tommy Marsden’s parents’ bathroom toilet, with its pine-scented blue ball of toilet cleaner under the rim. She wiped her mouth on the pale pink towelling toilet-seat lid before lifting it again and heaving out more vomit. She remembered kissing Benny Shearer and, before he could get excited, being sick on his new Nike trainers. She didn’t even like Benny Shearer.