‘What?’ Dan looks up at him.

‘I said, how awful for you. Do you want to talk about it?’ Atticus toys with the height adjuster on the seat.

Dan wonders why he thought Atticus might take him seriously. He’s batted away any attempt at serious conversation for the last six weeks and all his explanations have been anaemic, full of watery holes. Dan’s trying to tell Atticus something, trying to give a part of himself, but Atticus dodges left, and feints right on that chair, avoiding the ball. He doesn’t want to hold the weight of Dan’s problems and hides the pulse of his own. Trying to help Atticus is like having a roof full of leaks and only one bucket.

The only time Dan felt he was getting anywhere near the truth was when they met on the Beacon and they’d shared that look. Atticus’s pupils, two globes of unexplored territory, like bombs dropping on Dan’s defences. In that moment, he’d felt authentic.

They’ve met a few times since then, but never back at the Beacon. Too open, too conspicuous. Luke might see them. So Dan has met Atticus at the sprawling grounds of Stanmer Park instead. They have walked across lattices of fields in the dying light, Dan’s elongated shadow so much braver than he is as it blurred into Atticus’s.

Occasionally Atticus would brush his hand against Dan’s as they walked, and once he had bent to tie up Dan’s lace when they were sitting on a log, but other than that, he hasn’t touched him. Dan had both prayed he would and hoped he wouldn’t.

Atticus always carries a notebook in his jacket. Dan had spotted it peeking out, like a pocket square. He was desperate to read it. Once, when the grass was damp, Atticus laid down his jacket for Dan to sit on. Dan had been charmed and embarrassed in equal parts. When Atticus went off to ‘relieve himself’, Dan had pulled out the book (after sniffing the collar of the jacket for three giddy and arousing seconds, then three more) and flicked guiltily through the pages, which were filled with Atticus’s spidery scrawl. He couldn’t make out much, but one sentence, underlined twice, stood out: ‘My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you’ – Pushkin. He had read that line again, committing it to memory. Is that how Atticus felt too? He had frantically searched for more, but the rest was illegible, and the sound of bracken snapping underfoot alerted him that Atticus was inbound.