It turned out that the Green Club met to consider, not the environment as such, but environmental actions. Zoe had never heard of an action before the afternoon she watched the video that Mx Thompson played, with its high-octane television footage of scruffy people shouting at policemen. Afterwards, Mx Thompson (they/them/theirs), skinny as a razor clam, pale, silent, with freckles the colour of their gold-red hair, one of those teachers who liked the sound of their own voice much less than normal, explained that it was a road protest; that the protesters were protecting trees; got them to think about the sacred oak in Celtic culture; how the human love and veneration of trees was deep in our psyche; which is why we all put up fir trees in our homes at Christmas; which was why these young people had camped out to protect ancient woodlands from being decimated by careless governments.

When the two older girls proposed that the group should continue their meeting outside school, without the teacher, Zoe was so intoxicated – she, Zoe Brock, hanging out with Tara Gill (who had sewn a green thread all the way down the leg of her grey school trousers, and the teachers said nothing about it), Stella Armitage (who said that yes, obviously idolising footballers and film stars was brain-dead), and a boy from the lower sixth (they called him Ravi, to match them, a bilingual false etymology – his given name was Raymond) – that she barely noted the focus of discussions. They went to the tea shop on the high street, where Tara proposed motions, Stella sewed banners with emotive messages about climate change and decimated forests, and Ravi took minutes. It was a while before Zoe had the courage to mention the nature of her father’s job, but when she did, nobody seemed to think badly of her for it, despite all the criticism of the government which went on at these meetings. By then, of course, she was used to people in her everyday life being in awe of her father and his out-of-the-ordinary circle. Ravi’s dad worked on the fish farm. His mum, who was from Turkey, didn’t have a job yet; but was managing the family’s construction, at the weekends, of a wooden kit-home they’d ordered online. In the meantime, they lived in a caravan on the outskirts of Ayrness.

‘My mum just got a grant from Women Entrepreneurs in Work to put on a green roof,’ said Ravi, out of the hearing of Tara and Stella. ‘You should come round and see it, it’s really cool.’