He sits on the edge of a low wall, a neat, ornamental boundary running down the side of a path and stretching along the edge of the muddy lawn into the dark distance of the long garden and the bright stars.

‘All right?’

Jack’s voice is casual as he steps out beside him. Dillon holds out the joint by way of an answer.

Jack takes a deep drag. Passes it back.

‘Shit party.’

Dillon shrugs.

‘That girl was ugly.’

‘What girl?’

‘One you were humping.’

‘I wasn’t humping her.’

‘You looked like it.’

‘I wasn’t humping her.’

Jack grins. ‘Maybe you just had an itchy dick.’

Dillon passes the joint. Jack inhales and sits in silence for a moment, letting the smoke out slow. His head sits back on his neck and the angles of it show stark in the light from the house. He seems to be made of a harder substance than Dillon. His bones are closer to the surface.

‘I heard about your mum,’ he says.

Dillon’s fingers brush Jack’s as he takes the joint back. Jack’s fingers are blunt and fleshy, the nails bitten to nothing. Little nubs of pale pink in a half-moon of angry red tidemarks.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jack says.

Dillon feels the damp paper against his lips. He holds the smoke as long as he can. He feels dizzy, but it’s probably from holding his breath. He lets it out.

‘If you need anything.’

That’s what people said. It’s what they all said. Anything. Anything at all.

Dillon hears his own words as if someone else is saying them.

‘You could fuck off.’

He expects at least a punch. He’s flinching already. But Jack gets up.

‘Sure,’ he says.

And he’s gone.

Later, after Ryan has been taken home, and Yannis has puked on the stair carpet, and the girl Dillon kissed has collapsed on a sofa with her knickers showing, Dillon wanders through to the front room. It’s a different kind of party now, where everything is slicked over with a sticky haze, a slurred filter of strangeness that makes people lean on walls and talk intently in corners.

He sees Jack in the middle of a ring of people. He’s staggering, like he’s falling. It’s funny, and everyone around is laughing big laughs with heads thrown back and stained teeth showing black in the dim light. Rose is there too. She’s out of place amongst these heavy bodies, a lanky shadow swaying on thin legs.

Dillon remembers the day in year seven she came to school in bright red heels. They were clumpy and thick at the end of her brittle ankles, cheap and strange and flagrant. She couldn’t walk in them. Everyone laughed. She got sent to Mrs Jackson’s office.

She places her hands on the back of the sofa, poised for something.