‘Nice,’ he says, smiling.

This time Callum’s laugh is raucous and loud. He turns to Jack as he laughs, and Dillon can hear the tone of it. Jack splutters, and Callum leans forward, makes a face and says,

‘Nice!’

Jack laughs. Callum laughs. Alisha laughs. And then Dillon’s head is thick and angry and he says, ‘Fuck off.’

Callum steps forward. ‘You what?’

Dillon feels his heartbeat thicken in his ears. Alisha looks uninterested.

‘Joking,’ he says, swallowing his words.

Callum’s meaty face breaks open into a wide shout. ‘Ha!’ Dillon can see his tonsils. Callum points at him, and turns to Jack. ‘He’s fucking shitting it, this little prick.’

‘Leave him alone,’ says Jack.

That’s the worst thing. Dillon darts forward suddenly and pushes Callum backwards. He falls, and Dillon runs back up the track and round over the bridge, blood racing. He laughs as he runs. Spring can do that to you.

‘Have you ever seen an owl?’ Dillon asks.

‘No.’

‘My dad says there’s one that lives in here.’

‘I’ve never seen it.’

They sit on the broken stairs, in the dark, in the empty house at the end of the long block. Under their feet is the gritty rubble of the house as it slowly disintegrates. They stopped taking photos weeks ago, but they still meet.

‘I finished my essay,’ he says.

‘Me too,’ Rose says.

This is how their conversation goes, mostly. Long gaps, short answers. The slow rhythm of the dark. Silences where his mind starts to wander, and he almost feels like he’s talking to himself.

‘What do you want?’ he asks.

She says nothing.

‘Properly,’ he adds. ‘Not if you could just have anything, but really, things that might really happen.’

He waits.

‘You first.’

Dillon narrows his eyes at the inky shadows.

‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘Be happy.’

When the words fall, they no longer seem to mean much.

‘Make films.’

He pulls his phone from his pocket. He shows her the video of the leaves. The screen floats bright and disembodied against the darkness, the windy day rustling clumsily out of the speaker into the still night.

‘I’m going to make a film about the seasons,’ he says.

She takes the phone. Her face is lit up by the screen. He watches the reflection in her eyes, and the shade cast in the crook of her nose. A neat scar crosses her temple, straight as a ruler, picked out with a faint shadow in the oblique light.

He grabs the phone back before the clip has finished.

A car moves slowly past on the street outside. As it turns, the headlights touch the inside of the house with a crisp, bright block that sweeps down one wall. For a moment the peeling wallpaper picks out sharp, curled shapes in black down a diamond-patterned wall.

‘I want a sofa,’ Rose says at last.