The thought of it itches. He rolls his sleeve down again, but he can feel the pinprick where he has been breached, and where they will carry on breaching him. Inside is the other, the sickness, sprung from somewhere unspeakable.

‘OK?’ asks Dr Flint.

‘Yeah.’

He pulls his jacket on.

‘We’ll let you know.’

As he walks back down the corridor, he feels his swagger returning. Fuck this, he thinks. He feels the words in his mouth. Fuck this. His lips move. The kick and hiss, the click on his palate, soothes him. He can see the flowers at the front of the clinic, the bright sun against the dirty glass doors, and he barrels out, half skipping, just as Dillon steps up.

‘Hey.’

The sound is reflexive, cautious. Dillon acknowledges him warily.

Jack smiles. He uses his teeth. ‘You all right, bud?’

Dillon nods. Jack swings round, his feet moving restlessly. He looks like he wants to run. Like he might sing or hit someone.

‘I’m late,’ says Dillon. He isn’t.

Jack grins wider. And for no clear reason he hangs his mouth wide, wolfish, then snaps his teeth together with a clack. He throws his head back and laughs, and dances down the path.

In the waiting room, Dillon picks up Closer. He skims the pages. He sees bad flesh circled, pants showing. He looks closely to see how much you can really make out in the poorly printed grain of it. He flexes his left hand. The faint ache deep in his bone is still there, but this should be the last check-up.

He wonders where Rose is.

Aaron is fourteen now. He is tall, thin, and his awkwardness is hardening into something sharp and strange. He often misses school. When he does, he goes down to the river, up the path into the woods. He walks for hours. Sometimes he goes up on the fells.

He wears a hoody under his blazer. He wears trainers, and his coat is old and worn. On the fell tops, in the heather, he holds it round him with his hands in his pockets. It looks like it could pass round his body twice. There is a limestone rock he goes to, cresting through the purple flowers like a breaking wave. He sits on it in the sun, under it if the wind cuts harder. There is a crack in it where he keeps a pack of cigarettes. In the fresh wide air the smoke whips thinly up. Walking the paths, you might catch the tail of it.

In school, he sits at the front. His teachers think this will make him learn better. He stares at what they write. He copies it down. His writing spiders across the page. His fingers don’t seem to trust pens. He can’t hold a margin. If he writes a paragraph it slopes down the page as if the words are leaking away.