They tell him things, and he does what they say. Someone works with him. She sits beside him in English, and they read Macbeth together. He understands it. He has been told the story, and when the teacher explains what it’s about, he gets it. But when he looks at the words in the book, he gets nothing.

Macbeth is the worst, but it happens with the others too. He reads a poem. He listens to what the teacher says. She says the word ‘rustled’ is onomatopoeia. He writes it down. She says isn’t it sad? He writes down that it is sad.

All knowledge is equally far from him. He does his duty, but he has no idea why Wordsworth is writing about going out in a boat. That’s not true: he knows why, because the teacher has told him, but the idea that the poem should speak to him is as absurd as asking why it is he likes the fells, or why it is Jack makes him feel loved. Poems exist, and the fells exist, and Jack exists, and Aaron walks between them with a splinter of ice deep in his heart.

The day after the premiere, Rose wakes late. The day hits her with a smack of light, a quick surfacing from the depths. Her face is warm, and she feels the stickiness of sleep in her mouth and in the crook of her elbow.

Her dress is on the chair. It hangs, tiny, a scrap, like nothing. She remembers the feel of wearing it. The strangeness of not being herself.

She swings herself from the bed. She stands. She looks at her legs below the T-shirt she wears in bed. She sees the bend of them, above the knee, the bow, the thin thighs. She rests her hands on them. Her fingers touch a few inches above the knee.

She pulls on jeans.

Rachael smiles as Rose walks into the office. A new smile. Her face moves forward as she does so, reaching out, teeth first. Her eyes are hungry.

‘Oh my god. That was incredible!’

Rose can’t stop her mouth cracking open into a matching smile. She sits behind it, curious, her face mirroring Rachael’s.

‘What was his name?’

Rose remembers the heat of his breath on her.

‘Jacqui!’

Jacqui is here now.

‘Was he fit?’ asks Rachael.

Jacqui nods. ‘Yeah.’

Rose tries to picture him. Dark hair. Loose and curly. She can feel it on her neck.

‘Did you get his number?’

Rose shakes her head.

‘What was his name? You can message him.’